Miami school district earns A rating from the state; Broward gets B
Miami-Dade County Public Schools celebrated an A rating, the third time in a row the district has reached this milestone when excluding the last two years of the pandemic when it did not receive grades, according to school grades released Thursday by the Florida Department of Education.
Broward County Public Schools earned a B from the state, missing an A rating by 1 percentage point. The district earned the same grade in 2018 and 2019, the last year it received the ratings.
“It’s a special day for the school district,” Miami-Dade Superintendent Jose Dotres said during a news conference Thursday. “It is a day of recognition ... for what so many across this district have done and the work they have labored in to really create some encouraging results on behalf of students,” specifically teachers, school leaders and the School Board.
The annual ratings — which measure student performance from the start of the school year through the end of the academic year — are calculated based on up to 11 components, the majority of which focus on achievement on standardized tests and high school graduation rates.
This year’s scores mark the first full school year where grade data has been released since 2019. In 2020-21, districts could opt out of receiving a letter grade. No scores were given in the 2019-20 year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Miami-Dade sees more A schools
More than half of Miami-Dade schools — 225 schools, or 54% — earned an A rating this year, state metrics show, up from 200 A schools in 2019, or 46 percent of the district’s schools.
Overall, the district also received 96 Bs, 93 Cs, one D and one F, data show.
Frederick R. Douglass Elementary School, 314 NW 12th St., received the D rating, while Kipp Liberty Academy, 3400 NW 87th St., had the F, according to the district
Forty-two schools reported incomplete scores, which “may be related to schools having late-reported results or not meeting the 95% tested criteria, and may be cause for an appeal,” district officials said. Of those, 30 are traditional district schools and 12 are charter schools.
During Thursday’s news conference, Dotres, board members and others highlighted a team effort from district staff, teachers and students.They touted the district’s successes amid the hurdles students, teachers and staff have overcome, such as learning losses students experienced during virtual learning and mental health issues students and teachers continue to face as a result of the pandemic.
READ MORE: Miami-Dade and Broward schools’ report card: Learning losses, mental health, test scores
Dotres emphasized the programs implemented throughout the year to offset any challenges, including “reintegrating students back into the classroom,” he said. Moreover, he said, teachers had to both “accelerate learning and remediate at the same time. No easy task.”
The School Board hired Dotres at the end of January to succeed former Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who left the district in February to head Los Angeles public schools.
READ MORE: Miami school district hires Jose Dotres as superintendent
Other strategies used, officials said, included classes on Saturday, which launched in August, and before- and after-school tutoring.
Broward County near A rating
To earn an A rating, districts must score 62% of possible points or greater, according to the state. Broward public schools earned 61% of total points possible.
Still, Broward schools earned more A ratings than any other letter grades: 104 schools, or 38%, overall. In 2019, 105 district schools earned an A rating.
The district also received 70 Bs, 86 Cs, nine Ds, and three Fs, data show. Twenty-four schools received an incomplete, data show.
North Fork Elementary School in Fort Lauderdale, South Broward Montessori Charter School in Hallandale Beach and Endeavour Primary Learning Center in Lauderhill received the F rating.
Broward Superintendent Vickie Cartwright in a news release said she is “incredibly proud of our students, teachers and school administrators, and thankful for the unwavering support of our School Board.”
“The grades reflect the hard work, dedication and commitment to ensure our students had the learning opportunities needed to overcome the unfinished learning brought upon by the pandemic,” she said.
FSA scores show work remains
Thursday’s school grades come one week after the Department of Education released Florida Standard Assessment results for the school year and nearly one month after third-grade reading scores were announced.
The annual exams, which measure student performance in English language arts, mathematics, social studies and science, showed that public school students in Miami-Dade and Broward performed better overall on this year’s annual exams compared to last year’s, but only slightly more than half of the students earned a passing score of Level 3 or higher in English and math.
In science, fewer than half of the students in fifth through eighth grades earned a passing grade.
For third-graders, the assessments showed slight increases in Broward and slight decreases in Miami-Dade.
For Dotres, district grades and FSA scores underscore the need to “celebrate the academic recovery trajectory” scores show, while also acknowledging lingering achievement gaps that still need attention. The conversation, he said, is about “proficiency versus learning gains.”
“We have to lift the proficiency of every student but also be attentive to the learning gains,” he said. “It’s always going to go back to how we support the teachers and all the additional interventions and preventions.”
Dotres also cited the district’s Achievement Gap Task Force, a group meant to tackle the achievement gap within the district.
“We will be very attentive to how we are doing in each of these areas, making sure we attend to the needs of all students and proficiency levels become important for all subgroups,” Dotres said.
