2006-2007 School Grades Released – Wakulla Named an “A” District

{sidebar id=1}Wakulla County schools earned an “A” rating overall as a district as determined by the Florida school grading system. Grades were released last week by the Florida Department of Education, and Wakulla is one of nineteen counties out of sixty-seven to earn an “A” rating. By point totals, Wakulla is the highest scoring school district in the Big Bend.

“All of our schools did well this year, in keeping with the high standards we set for education in this county. It is the combined efforts of teachers, students, parents, non-instructional personnel and administrators that make us a strong academic district. I am so proud of all the work that goes into making our students able to compete successfully with any student anywhere,” stated Superintendent David Miller.

All of the elementary and middle schools in the district earned an “A” rating. Crawfordville Elementary and Shadeville Elementary schools moved up from a “B” last year, while Medart Elementary, Riversprings Middle and Wakulla Middle schools all continued to earn an “A” from the previous year. Wakulla’s COAST Charter School of grades kindergarten through eighth is also counted in the district grade and rose from a “C” to a “B”.

Wakulla High School improved tremendously, scoring only two points away from an “A”. Because of the state rule that mandates the letter grade be dropped by one whole grade if 50% of the lowest quartile do not make a year’s learning gain in reading, Wakulla High’s extremely high “B+” was lowered to a “C”. WHS scored at 46% for the lowest quartile, improving from the past two years of scoring 38% in 2004-2005 and 42% in 2005-2006. “We knew it would be at least a two year process to show growth using the state’s Continuous Improvement Model as we have for the second year in a row,” observed WHS Principal Mike Crouch. “We will continue to have high expectations for our students, supported by the great collaboration of our faculty and staff, parents, and administrators from the district office and other schools. It has been a unified effort to raise the grade and we will not rest with a “C”, but will continue to improve.”

Helping to make the district an “A” were the WHS ninth graders who scored number one in the state for math and the combined middle school eighth graders who scored number one in the state for writing.

School grades are based on the reading, math, writing and science Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) scores for students in grades three through ten.

This article originally published on July 2, 2007.

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