Manatee schools get ‘A’s’ as state releases final school grades

The Florida Department of Education released preliminary school and district grades Friday, and overall, Southwest Florida districts fared well.

The FSA was a tougher test than its predecessor, one meant to judge whether students had mastered Florida’s new academic standards in language arts math. The standards are a version of Common Core.

In Nassau County, where there were eight As and three Bs, Linda Morris, executive director of administrative services for the Nassau County School District, said she was thankful that the grade projections were accurate, but she is not ready to give a further comment on Nassau’s school grades at this time.

All the school grades can be seen by visiting: http://schoolgrades.fldoe.org. We will have much more on this tonight at 5 and 6.

Pinellas and Duval both touted how their districts’ grade of a B was the first since 2011.

Learning gains will not be calculated in 2014-15 because there is only one year of Florida Standards Assessment (FSA) results available. “In prior years, school grades were based on a complex calculation of student performance, proficiency and many other factors”.

In an email, education department spokeswoman wrote that grades “are a critical component of our state’s accountability system because they provide students, parents, educators district leaders and members of the public the information they need to help students improve”. It also did not use its full grading formula because that requires two years of test scores.

Saunders said there is still work to do to ensure that all the district students can succeed, but said she is proud of the efforts by students, teachers and administrators in a year of unknowns.

“I don’t think the grades this year have a lot of value – there’s just no creditability”, Sublette said. It said this year’s grades should be viewed as “informational baseline” marks.