{"id":3980,"date":"2012-01-04T15:17:06","date_gmt":"2012-01-04T20:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=3980"},"modified":"2012-01-04T17:16:48","modified_gmt":"2012-01-04T22:16:48","slug":"when-is-an-a-not-an-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2012\/01\/04\/when-is-an-a-not-an-a\/","title":{"rendered":"When Is An A Not An A?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

AJC1 \/ Flickr<\/p>

91 Florida high schools scored well enough to earn an A, but were docked a letter grade because of the fine print.<\/p><\/div>\n

Manatee County schools’ response to Wednesday’s school grade announcement<\/a> caught our eye this afternoon.<\/p>\n

“Five of seven Manatee District High Schools scored enough points to qualify for an A grade from the state,” a press release read.<\/p>\n

What the carefully worded release did not say is that five of seven Manatee high school actually earned an A — and it’s worth asking why.<\/p>\n

The Florida Department of Education<\/a> includes a lot of factors when calculating school grades: Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test scores; high-level college prep courses such as Advanced Placement; graduation rates and performance on SAT or other college entrance exams.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But the grades<\/a> also specifically target the performance of the bottom 25 percent of students. If schools don’t improve the graduation rate or FCAT<\/a> scores of the bottom 25 percent of students, they could be docked a letter grade.<\/p>\n

This is what happened to three Manatee high schools, Braden River, Lakewood Ranch and Southeast. The schools scored enough points to earn an A on other measures but<\/p>\n

All three schools failed to graduate 75 percent of students the state considers at-risk of dropping out, and none of the three schools improved on their at-risk graduation rate from the previous year.<\/p>\n

So all three schools saw what might otherwise have been a ‘A’ drop to a ‘B.’<\/p>\n

The Manatee schools were not alone — 91 schools would have earned an A but for the requirements for the lowest-performing students, according to the Florida Department of Education.<\/p>\n

The news was still good for Southeast — the school raised its grade to a B from a D.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Manatee County schools’ response to Wednesday’s school grade announcement caught our eye this afternoon. “Five of seven Manatee District High Schools scored enough points to qualify for an A grade from the state,” a press release read. What the carefully worded release did not say is that five of seven Manatee high school actually earned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[1035,103,1106,234],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3980"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3986,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3980\/revisions\/3986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}