Flagler’s Third Graders Improve English Skills and Climb to 10th Best in Florida

Flagler County school district news releases–like most government-issued releases–tend to exaggerate the positive and underplay the negatives. Not in this case. A release announcing the results of Grade 3 Florida Standards Assessments in English Language Arts buried the lead: that Flagler’s 3rd graders improved their already-strong position in the state from 14th to 10th overall.

The proportion of students who scored a 3 or better (out of 5)–that is, students who are proficient in English at their grade level–also improved, from 60 percent to 63 percent.

Statewide in 2016, 54 percent of students scored a 3 or better, with St. Johns County again producing by far the best results, with 77 percent of its students at or better than proficiency, and almost half its students scoring 4 or 5. Just 23 percent of its students scored below a 3. The next-closest school district to St. Johns is Santa Rosa, where 70 percent of students were proficient or better, and 37 percent scored a 4 or a 5.

In comparison, a third of Flagler’s students scored a 4 or a 5, and 37 percent of the district’s students–well over a third–can’t handle English at grade level.

Statewide in 2015, 53 percent of students scored a 3 or better, with 73 percent of students in St. Johns County scoring 3 or better, five points better than Sarasota County.

Among individual schools, Old Kings Elementary’s students were the strongest, with 69 percent at a 3 or better (down from 71 percent last year), and 41 percent scoring a 4 or a 5. Next was Belle Terre Elementary, with 67 percent of students at a 3 or better, and 36 percent scoring in the 4 and 5 range. But both schools still had a third of their students scoring below a 3.

The most-improved school this year is Rymfire Elementary, where 66 percent of 3rd graders scored at or better than proficiency, a 7-point improvement from last year’s 59 percent. The school decreased the proportion of students below a 3 from 41 percent last year to 34 percent this year, and increased the number of students in the 4 and 5 range from 25 percent to 39 percent, a significant improvement.

Keep in mind: comparisons between one year and the next compare entirely different groups of students, as last year’s 3rd graders are this year’s 4th graders. The results do reflect a school’s more focused strategies to improve skills, but only up to a point: faculty cannot control to what extent their student population may be more fluid one year than the next. It cannot control the socio-economic backgrounds of students (poorer students score less well than richer students, for example).

The Florida Standards Assessments is the state’s latest attempt at a uniform testing system. From 2011 to2014, the FCAT 2.0 was used to measure student achievement of the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards in reading, mathematics, and writing. That test, which had its problems, was replaced by the Florida Standards Assessments in 2015 in English language arts and mathematics to measure student achievement of the Florida Standards.

The complete scores are in the chart below.

School	Year	Students	Mean Score	% Scoring 3 or Better	Percent at Each Level
					1	2	3	4	5
Bunnell Elementary	2016	185	301	54	18	21	31	18	5
	2015	160	299	51	22	28	29	13	9
Rymfire Elementary	2016	172	307	66	9	25	27	30	9
	2015	165	303	59	11	30	34	20	5
Wadsworth Elementary	2016	134	304	57	20	23	25	21	11
	2015	134	300	56	16	28	35	17	4
Old Kings Elementary	2016	177	307	69	14	18	29	27	14
	2015	127	308	71	9	20	36	25	9
Belle Terre Elementary	2016	226	308	67	11	22	32	21	15
	2015	181	301	66	11	23	42	17	7
Imagine School (Charter)	2016	101	305	62	12	26	33	18	12
	2015	125	304	59	18	23	27	22	10
Palm Harbor (Charter)	2016	6	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA	NA
	2015	11	298	64	9	27	55	9	0
Flagler School District	2016	1,001	305	63	14	23	30	22	11
	2015	904	303	60	14	25	34	19	7
Florida	2016	220,663	301	54	20	18	24	26	12
	2015	215,264	300	53	22	25	27	18	7