A third of Florida’s school districts scored an A in the 2023-24 school year. The Flagler County school district was not among them. For the third year in a row, and for the 10th of the last 11th grading years, the district remains stuck at a B, one of 26 districts in that pack. Seventeen districts scored a C. None scored lower. Two districts were not graded. The Florida Department of Education released the grades today.
A silver lining sure to lead the district’s PR framing of the results: For the first time in nine years, every school was at an A or a B. That meant improvement for Bunnell Elementary, from last year’s C to a B. Buddy Taylor Middle School also improved from a C to a B, after six straight years as a C school. Matanzas High School got its first A in nine years, rising from a B.
Superintendent LaShakia Moore called the all-A-B result a “milestone” in a Facebook brief message. “I am so proud of the hard work of our faculty, staff and students and the amazing support this great community,” she said. “This is exactly the momentum that we need to go after being an A district.”
Statewide, 38 percent of schools earned an A, 27 percent earned a B and 32 percent got a C. Only 10 schools out of 3,406 failed, five of them elementary. Only one high school failed.
Indian Trails Middle School and Old Kings Elementary, the two whiter, wealthier schools preserved their A (Indian Trails has been a B school only once in its 18-year history, back in 2016). Belle Terre, Rymfire and Wadsworth Elementary, Flagler Palm Coast High School, and Imagine School at Town Center, the district’s lone charter school (it is publicly funded but privately run) all maintained the B they had last year. (An earlier version of this story incorrectly had Wadsworth at an A.)
On a more granular level, however, the numbers behind the final grades are more middling than silver-lined. The grades and the numbers are broken down here.
Up to 12 components go into the calculation. No school is scored on all 12, but on eight to 10. There are five achievement components: English Language Arts for all grades, third grade English Language Arts in particular, math, science and social studies), all scored through standardized or end-of-course tests. There are four “learning gains” components—in English, and math, and more particularly among the 25 percent lowest performing students in math and English. So for instance if a school’s lowest performing quarter showed improvements (even though the students themselves may not all be the same), that school benefits from points that go into the overall calculation.
There are three additional components, including the percentage of middle school students who take either a high school level course or attain an industry certification; the graduation rate (if it improves, the district gets points), and college and career acceleration, which accounts for students in Advanced Placement, the International Baccalaureate (IB), or similar accelerated programs, as well as the percentage of students who are dually enrolled in college and high school. The better the achievements on those accelerated courses and the higher the percentages in dual enrollment, the more points.
The graduation rate at FPC was a middling 85. At Matanzas, it was 93.
When all the components are added up for each school, the school gets a percentage of the total possible points it scored. For example, Buddy Taylor Middle earned 58 percent of all possible points. Old Kings got 68, the strongest school by that measure, Indian Trails got 65, and Matanzas High got 64. The lowest ranked was Bunnell Elementary, with 54. Point for point, every school made some gains this year, which gives each school some reason for celebration or boasting.
No school broke the 70-percent threshold, as do schools in better-performing districts, which helps lift their district. In St. Johns County, for example, 15 schools were at 70 percent or above, and six were at 80 percent or above. St. Johns continues to be the state’s leading school district, its A this year as routine as in previous years.
The bar is not high, which may explain why so few schools fail anymore: an elementary school qualifies for an A if it scores 62 percent or greater of all possible points. For middle and high schools, it’s 64 percent or better. An elementary school qualifies for an B if it secures between 54 and 61 percent of all possible points. For middle and high schools, it’s 57 to 63 percent. Schools must also have tested at least 95 percent of their students to qualify for a grade. In all Flagler schools, testing was near 100 percent, though it remains unclear what defines a qualifying student.
The last time the district scored an A was in 2019, toward the end of the tenure of Superintendent Jim Tager, who was pushed out of the district after three years, much like his successor, Cathy Mittelstadt was last year. Moore took over in the spring of 2023 as interim superintendent, and was appointed the permanent superintendent in September.
Flagler County School Grades, 2005-2019
| School | 2005 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bunnell Elementary | A | B | B | A | A | B | B | A | B (C)* | A | B | C | C | C | C | C | C | B |
| Belle Terre Elementary | A | A | A | A | A | A | A | A | A | A | B | B | B | A | A | B | B | |
| Old Kings Elementary | A | A | A | A | A | B | A | A | B | A | A | C | A | B | B | A | A | A |
| Rymfire Elementary | B | A | B | C | A | A | B (c)* | A | B | B | B | C | B | C | B | B | ||
| Wadsworth Elementary | A | A | B | A | B | B | A | A | A | A | A | B | C | C | B | B | B | B |
| Imagine | D | A | C | A | B | B | B | B | B | B | B | B | B | B | ||||
| Indian Trails Middle | A | A | A | A | A | A | A | A | A | A | B | A | A | A | A | A | A | |
| Buddy Taylor Middle | B | A | A | A | A | A | A | B | C | C | B | C | C | C | C | C | C | B |
| Flagler-Palm Coast High | C | B | C | A | D | B | B | B | A | B | B | C | B | B | B | C | B | B |
| Mantanzas High | C | D | A | B | B | B | A | A | B | A | B | B | B | B | B | B | A | |
| iFlagler | B | B | A | A | ||||||||||||||
| District | B | A | A | A | A | B | B | B | B | B | B | B | A | B | B | B |
Grades are based on standardized tests and other factors, including student improvement, end-of-year exams, AP and IB, dual enrollment, and graduation rates.
(*) In 2013, the state Board of Education agreed to pad grades in such a way as to prevent them from falling by more than one letter grade. More than 20 percent of schools benefited from the padding, including Rymfire and Bunnell elementaries in Flagler, whose grades would have been a C if the actual standards were applied.
