FORT MYERS - Dozens of Florida schools notified last month that they passed academic muster under the new federal No Child Left Behind law now are being told they did not.
Those 58 schools, including several in the Tampa Bay area, could lose students next year if they fail to meet the federal requirements two years in a row.
And dozens of other schools that were told they didn't meet the standards are learning that they did.
All told, the status of 326 schools statewide will change now that the Florida Department of Education has recalculated each school's scores under the No Child Left Behind rules. The recalculation, and the imminent renotification of the affected schools, makes for an awkward start in Florida for the controversial federal law.
The Department of Education did not release the names of the affected schools Tuesday.
"This was our first time out of the box trying to do that," said Education Commissioner Jim Horne, explaining all the changes in the scores. He said some of the mistakes involved calculations for the academic performance of special education children.
Horne said the results released last month were considered preliminary. Even now, schools have 30 days to appeal their status.
The recalculations had little impact on the overall percentage of schools statewide that met all of the federal requirements. About 86 percent of the state's schools had at least one group of children that fell short of academic proficiency.
Only 409 of the 3,179 schools eligible statewide were proficient in all of the academic areas.
