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The Florida Department of Education released today school grades, evidencing a huge decrease among elementary schools, and a soft decrease in middle schools. Education Tom Butler said:



“We’re seeing that our schools are maintaining progress. Now obviously we did have a drop from the amount of ‘A’ elementary schools from last year and we had not as far as a drop in middle school, but a little bit of a drop. So what we see is that long term we’re looking pretty good. But in the short term we have to redouble our efforts and make sure we get back to the progress we’re used to.”

The percentage of A, B elementary schools dropped from 87 to 74, while the same percentage on middle schools dropped from 80 to 78. Who is to blame? Butler says Florida’s bottom quartile of students:

“Last year we had a banner year. We had 87 percent of our elementary schools had an ‘A’ or a ‘B.’ That’s just outstanding. And the decline to this year, it really is just that those students didn’t make the same gains they made last year. It doesn’t mean our schools aren’t doing a great job. It just means that we need to redouble our efforts in that lowest quartile.”