Jeff Bergosh Blog: Escambia Schools Make Impressive Letter Grade Gains

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I am one member of a five person board. The opinions I express on this forum are mine only, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Escambia County Staff, Administrators, Employees, or anyone else associated with Escambia County Florida. I am interested in establishing this blog as a means of additional transparency to the public, outreach to the community, and information dissemination to all who choose to look. Feedback is welcome, but because public participation is equally encouraged, appropriate language and decorum is mandatory. Although this is not my campaign site for re-election--sometimes campaign related information will be discussed, therefore in an abundance of caution I add the following :

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Escambia Schools Make Impressive Letter Grade Gains

The Elementary and Middle School Grades for Escambia County Schools were released today by the Florida Department of Education. Escambia Schools as a whole made solid gains. Several schools improved markedly, including Montclair Elementary School—which went from an “F” to an “A” and Weis Elementary that went from a “D” to an “A”

The chart above shows the comparison in achievement between 2010 and 2011 for Escambia

County Schools. Schools that have this year’s grade highlighted in green have improved over last year. There is a lot of green on the chart—so much so that the PNJ is covering this fantastic achievement with a top of the page article on their online edition. Even our most ardent detractors acknowledge this is vast improvement. These naysayers will still find things to snipe us on, but that’s to be expected I suppose. Apparently the doubters have not seen this chart--showing the dramatic gains our district has made from 1999 to 2011. Negative downer people will always be among us.

I, however, choose to concentrate on the positives:

We are moving forward as a district, we are headed in the right direction. Even though our funding this year is $50Million less than it was just a few years ago, and we are being cut more and more every year, we still continue to improve. Despite generational poverty and other challenges unique to Escambia in the 4 county panhandle area, we in Escambia County have managed to meet class size (unlike Santa Rosa and thirty other counties in the state that didn’t), make drastic improvements on our school letter grades, give employees raises, consolidate functions to create efficiencies for the taxpayers, and create one of the top rated high school programs in the nation. We have also stedily improved on our FCAT scores even as the bar is being raised and in 2011 our schools are being measured on FCAT 2.0 standards with an increased writing score required to demonstrate proficiency.

Yes, we are making huge strides forward despite numerous challenges.

The students, parents, teachers, administrators, support staff, volunteers, corporate partners, and everyone associated with our school district deserves congratulations for the efforts put forth over the last year!