The School District of Lee County discussed school grades, graduation rate and student progress on Jan. 23 with one overall message: Lee schools still has a long way to go to get to where district officials want it to be.

“I am happy with the progress, but not content. We have a long way to go,” School Board Chair Sam Fisher said. “We are still not there. I know we are making progress, and we have a ways to go. It doesn’t take away from any of the hard work. This is our No. 1 job up here. I want to make sure we are really looking at things.”

SCHOOL GRADES

Accountability, Research, and Assessment Director Joy Marks began the presentation by sharing information about the Florida Department of Education Accountability Model — school grades, which includes areas of English Language Arts, math, science, social studies, graduation rate, middle school acceleration and college and career acceleration.

“Each category allows schools to earn up to 100 percent of points. Final grades are calculated by dividing the total number of earned percentage of points by the number of categories the schools had sufficient results in,” she said.

For example, K-5 school achievement percentage of points falls with ELA, math and science, for a total possible points of 300.

Sixteen elementary schools earned an A, with four for middle school, three for high school and one for a combination school, or a K-8 school.

Marks said 49.9% of schools received an A or B based on the new threshold and 46.3% received a C or D. Four schools received an incomplete, which signifies a school grade was withheld or revoked and designated as incomplete.

There was 78%, or 68 schools, that maintained their same school grade. Eighteen schools increased by one letter grade, and one school by two letter grades.

“Five schools decreased by one and one school by two letter grades,” she said.

The grades did not include learning gains, as did the 2021-22 school year.

There were three improved schools that went from a D to a C — Manatee Elementary School, G. Weaver Hipps Elementary School and Fort Myers Middle Academy.

PROGRESS MONITORING

The progress monitoring 1 and 2 data also showed more improvements need to be made in some areas, including English Language Arts and mathematics.

Deputy Superintendent Dr. Jennifer Cupid-McCoy said responding to the data is a critical step.

“How a teacher changes instructional approach, adjustments for each student within small group instruction, fidelity to teaching the benchmarks,” she said is the critical step.

Marks said the target is determined through some data analysis of students who took the assessment the prior year. They looked at how much scored in each achievement level and what was the district average, top average, lowest average and state average.

“We can look and see what should be an expectation of a student that took the assessment last year,” she said. “Based on these multiple data points, we understand the higher quartile and lowest quartile and average of level three.”

An example was given for sixth-grade ELA with a target of 47%. The first progress monitoring showed 39% against the PM objectives and the second showed 43%.

Superintendent Dr. Christopher Bernier said the assessment given is for what the students should know for the entire year. As more instruction and curriculum is given, those numbers will improve.

“We have a long way to go to reach proficiency. (When we) shoot for proficiency will find learning gains in the process,” he said.

For sixth-grade math, the target was 55% with the first progress monitoring at 14% and the second at 34%.

Cupid-McCoy said they have to engage in deep conversations of what that means as a whole and for the individual child.

“When we take a look at PM 2 data in exemplars, we cannot be satisfied with progress to date. We must continue to determine what steps and those next steps must be viable,” she said.

GRADUATION RATE

“In one year, we matched the highest graduation rate ever post-pandemic and ever pre-pandemic. The only graduation rate that was higher in the history of Lee County was the graduation rate where all of the state requirements for graduation were eliminated,” Bernier said. “We are back to the highest point this district has ever been, and while 85.1 is no cause to rain down the balloons and confetti, it is a reason to celebrate the hard work of our individuals that got us there and know that is not our end goal, but it’s the launching pad to all children graduating both college and career ready.”

Cupid-McCoy said they pushed, they supported, they held hands and they pushed more, and they will continue to do that for the students.

“Our graduation rate for ’22-’23 school year grew to 85.1%. Now I would like to thank elementary and middle school principals that over the years contribute to the growth of our students,” she said. “We must keep in mind it actually begins in pre-K. We are pleased with the movement; however, we do expect it to continue to grow. Ideally, we want 100% of our students to be prepared to go into the workforce.”

Chief Academic Officer Dr. Jeff Spiro said graduation does not start in a student’s senior year, but rather in pre-K. Part of the preparation has come through working with a consulting group that has been auditing K-2 curriculum and assessments through a heavy teacher voice, as well as feedback from administrators and surveys to all the K-2 teachers.

“Based on feedback, we began to rewrite some of our curriculum — the first unit, 20 days of daily instruction,” he said. “The rewrite will now include teacher voice.”

A representative from each school will provide feedback on the first unit of instruction, which will then go to the consulting group which will rewrite the first unit, which then will come back again for more feedback.

Spiro said another way the district is helping the graduation rate is through the Science of Reading, training that is taken by all K-2 teachers. The focus is proficiency and reading by third grade.

“Some of the early stages that we are hopeful will continue to contribute to the increase in graduation rate,” he said.

Focus also stems around ninth-grade students with interventions in place at the interim and quarters. Spiro said those interventions fall within Connect with Lee, expansion of ACT/SAT prep and Back on Track.

“Ninth-grade intervention is a work in progress. We will fine tune those systems as we continue to deepen our knowledge in area of resources around ninth-grade interventions,” he said. “This team is working on the creation of ninth-grade intervention team.”

The district is also doing graduation data chats — looking at every student as a senior and if they met graduation requirements, those that did not and what is taking place for intervention. Those chats began during the summer and the third chat took place last week.

“We have a district graduation team that is hyper focused on data. Daily they will go into graduation data tracker,” Spiro said.