Educators Perplexed as School Grades Tumble

Franklin County educators were scratching their heads Tuesday after learning that the grades awarded by the state to the district's four schools had either stayed the same or dropped.

Most disconcerting was the case of its two usually top performing schools, Central Campus in Eastpoint and the Apalachicola Bay Charter School in Apalachicola, which both plummeted by at least two letter grades.

Central Campus, known formerly as Brown Elementary, plunged four letter grades, from a B to an F, while the ABC School dropped two letter grades, from an A to a C.

"We've never had an F. I'm just devastated, to tell you the truth," said Deborah Huckeba, principal of Central Campus elementary, which serves grades kindergarten through fifth.

"I don't know what to attribute it to," she said.

ABC School Principal Don Hungerford said he was surprised at the grades. "We were fairly confident we would end up with a B or better. Overall our FCAT scores were as good or better than last year's. Our middle school scores were better than ever," he said. "At this point we're going to have go back and look at the actual data and see what happened."

The ABC School grade is its worst in four years, after two As and a B. Central Campus, when known as Brown, never fell below a C., and has had four Bs and two As in the last seven years.

The grade at East Campus in Carrabelle was given for both the high school and the elementary school and was a D. For each of the previous four years it had received a C, although it had posted Ds in 1999 and 2000.

The grade at West Campus in Apalachicola was given for the elementary and middle school and was a C, the same as last year. That campus, dating back to 1998, had mostly gotten either a C or a D.

The district's overall grade remained a C, the same as it has been since 2003.

An analysis of the criteria used to calculate the schools grades points to the fact that both Central Campus and ABC School missed points due to their difficulty in making learning gains in reading and mathematics, especially for the lowest 25 percent of their students.

Both schools had their usual percentage of students who met high standards in reading and math, which usually ranges around 60 to 70 percent.

But both saw drops in the percentage of students who had made learning gains. The ABC School saw only 45 percent of its lowest 25 percent of students making learning gains in reading, 28 percentage points below last year's performance.

Central Campus saw only 36 percent of all its students make learning gains in math, unlike 63 percent of its students who did so one year ago.

One bright spot in this regard was at the West Campus, where 71 percent of its students made learning gains in math. West Campus also scored the highest number of points of the district's four schools, with 494.