The Flagler County school district, like other districts and the state, is touting the latest students achievements with the release of standardized testing results.
“Flagler Schools is proud to announce increases in every subject area, as well as achieving the same pass rate or higher than the state average in all areas except one,” the local district announced in a release.
The state Department of Education said that “for the first time ever, more than 60% of Florida students are performing on or above grade level in both English language arts and mathematics, marking another significant milestone for Florida’s nation-leading education system.”
The claim that Florida’s education system is “nation-leading” is dubious at best: the state ranked 40th among the 50 states in average SAT scores in 2025. Florida students ranked 48th on average ACT scores. The National Assessment of Educational Progress also showed Florida students in the bottom half of states in math and reading, with better scores in science and writing. The NAEP is known as the “Nation’s Report Card.”
The SAT, the ACT and the NAEP are apples-to-apples comparisons between states. The results released today by the Department of Education are not. They compare results only within Florida of a test designed only for Florida students. In other words, what is considered at grade level in Florida may not be necessarily so in Massachusetts or New York.
“If we truly want to have the world-class education systems we should have here in Florida, then we’ve got to look a little broader than just the state assessments,” Florida Education Association president Andrew Spar said in a WUSF interview last year. He was also critical of the state’s repeated change in testing methods and assessments over the past decade, with the latest switch occurring in 2022-23. “It’s hard to know how our students are doing over the course of time when we constantly switch the type of assessment we are using to assess students,” he said.
The results released today should be considered with that caveat in mind.
Between 2023 and 2026, the percentage of students scoring on or above grade level on the end-of-year English Language Arts progress monitoring assessment increased by 12 percentage points, from 49 to 61 percent, the state reported. The percentage of students scoring on or above grade level on the end-of-year mathematics assessment improved by 9 percentage points, from 53 to 62 percent.
In Flagler County, the district reported the following:
- ELA pass rates increased by 5 points to 63%, 2 points higher than the state average of 61%.
- Math pass rates increased overall by 3 points to 64%, 3 points higher than the state average of 61%.
- Grade 5 pass rates increased overall by 3 points to 61%, 1 point higher than the state average of 60%.
- Grade 8 Science pass rates increased by 6 points to 60%, 3 points higher than the state average of 57%.
- Biology EOC pass rates increased by 5 points to 76%, 2 points higher than the state average of 74%.
- Civics EOC pass rates increased by 3 points to 74%, only 2 points behind the state average of 76%.
- U.S. History EOC pass rates increased by 3 points to 73%, equal to the state average.
“These results are a testament to the hard work and dedication that students and staff have continued to show year after year,” Flagler Schools Superintendent LaShakia Moore was quoted as saying in the release. “A major contributing factor was our continuous improvement cycles which encompasses schoolwide improvement plans, streamlined assessment windows, instructional reviews, and data chats.”
School grades for the district and each individual school are expected in July. The district scored an A rating only once since 2012, in 2019. It has been a B-rated district the rest of the time.
Jim says
Per this article:
“The SAT, the ACT and the NAEP are apples-to-apples comparisons between states. The results released today by the Department of Education are not. They compare results only within Florida of a test designed only for Florida students. In other words, what is considered at grade level in Florida may not be necessarily so in Massachusetts or New York. ”
This means Florida students do not favorably compare with students from other states – no all but some. I guess the education system has dropped so low at this point that we’re stuck with bragging about being below the level of other comparable students in the nation. I would hope the goal of Florida would be that our students would be highly competitive with any other students in the USA (or world, true be told). But that is not the case.
So the Florida education system can make these pitiful claims and pretend to be providing an excellent education to our children. Per the results demonstrated, that’s must not true. Remember that when we vote for school board members this fall. Clearly those in the jobs right now haven’t done anything to improve this situation and therefore do not deserve to be voted back in again.
Sherry says
Thank You Jim!
Don’t like statistical “FACTS”. . . just “hide” them, or change the methodology. . . it’s all good in a fascist state! The dumbed down cult members will never notice! SMH!
Skibum says
They must have used hillbilly J.D. Vance as their consultant to help them falsely manufacture a narrative that makes the current mess of FL education appear to be excellent despite actual statistics showing exactly the opposite. But J.D. had to hurry back to D.C. to give a maga audience a pep talk about how the “deep state” took down Nixon’s presidency and made him out to be a crook instead of the honest, “law abiding” man that he was… LOL!
Now it is up to another well known higher educational institution to, hopefully, revoke couch f*****r J.D.’s diploma for being so educationally deficient and intentionally dishonest to the American people. Come to think of it, he would fit in nicely with the current direction of this state’s dysfunctional edumicational mess.
WAKE UP says
Prediction: DeSantis needs Florida schools to show gains as he walks out the door to set the stage for his Presidential bid. No shocker in his announcement. They game the system, have been for years. The played with cut scores to make it look like schools were failing to justify dumping BILLIONS of your tax dollars into the voucher schemes. Now he’s played with the goal post again to say oh look how my policies have increased student achievement. It’s all bullshit and our kids are used as pawns in the game. Leave the schools, teachers, students alone. Here’s the reality “ the state ranked 40th among the 50 states in average SAT scores in 2025. Florida students ranked 48th on average ACT scores.” So what do you believe?
Stop starving public education. Support reform, transparency and accountability and students will benefit. Support efforts to change and evolve the system not strip it intentionally. You’ve got schools throughout the state with budgets collapsing because the grift is real. Wake up! The manipulation is mind blowing. These are your tax dollars. Paying for 70% + of the private tuition for students who have NEVER even attended public schools. Stop being such selfish suckers and recognize the taxpayers are being stolen from with little accountability, transparency or standards. Fast forward 15 years and we will see the complete dumbing down of our country. Jesus wake up. You’re being played. Follow the money.
Deborah Coffey says
The bar for education in Florida is set so low that the best we can say about Flagler’s scores is that we are happy to see a bit of improvement. Having taught high school in New York and Florida over a span of 28 years, the differences in academic standards, students’ acquisition of knowledge and critical thinking skills, and teacher training are simply vast. The Florida State Department of Education should stop lying about its “nation leading” system and travel to the Blue States to actually learn something from those states that actually DO lead the nation in education…New York being #1.
Layla says
Deborah,
Please explain to me what students in New York upon graduation brag about Socialism being a better choice than Capitalism.
If that is what is called “leading the nation”, I’ll stick with school choice.
Deborah Coffey says
You pick on 10 or 20 socialists? LOL. You can’t distinguish between the acquisition of knowledge and know-how and ideology? Really? Go ahead, stick with school choice. You’ll lose every time and so will the children.
Sherry says
Right On Deborah!
Zuffalina says
Maybe if we let the teacher’s teach and not let the administration get in the way we would have better scores. The administration makes these teachers do so much stuff that has nothing to do with teaching during their last time and their break times. They have recently told the teachers that they can do some continuing education for 10 hours and get paid $35 an hour per hour. And then when the continuing education was complete, they told them they could only pay them for 6.5 hours.. This has been an ongoing problem since before trump and j d vance….
Koyote says
Big Fish in a Little Pond syndrome …
But, compared to the rest of the USA :
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/florida-ranked-worst-country-public-135215326.html
https://www.aol.com/articles/florida-schools-rank-last-national-090601000.html
https://www.wusf.org/education/2026-05-13/florida-ranks-last-in-reading-warns-nationwide-education-report
Mothersworry says
Figures never lie, but liars always figure.