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Students get mixed results in testing
By ROBERT KING © St. Petersburg Times, published May 9, 2001
Four schools -- Fox Chapel Middle, Chocachatti Elementary, Suncoast Elementary and Pine Grove Elementary -- beat the state average in every subject. And a few others -- Brooksville and Westside elementaries, for example -- made giant improvements. But the news wasn't all good. All three high schools in Hernando County declined in writing. And Eastside Elementary, serving most of the county east of Brooksville, had such a poor showing on the fifth-grade math test it could earn a D when the state hands out A through F performance grades. In general, the county's elementary schools scored well while middle and high school students turned in mediocre performances. Those were a few of the first impressions from an avalanche of test data made available Tuesday by the Florida Department of Education. The results included scores from tests given this winter to students in grades three through 10. Yet, in the state's high-stakes testing system, only the results from grades four, five, eight and 10 will determine the all-important letter grades. Tuesday's results include scores of some special education students and kids who moved into the district late in the year, and those will not count toward a school's grade. So they are not foolproof in what they tell schools about their letter grade prospects. But they give some strong hints. Chocachatti, Suncoast, Pine Grove and Westside appear to be strong candidates for an A grade because of their reading, writing and math scores, as well as their rate of improvement. Deltona Elementary and J.D. Floyd Elementary, two schools that earned A's last year, and Brooksville Elementary, appear to be short of an A this year by a whisker. All of the county's middle and high schools appear headed for C's. The scores released Tuesday put even Fox Chapel Middle School, which last year earned an A and is the county's highest-scoring middle school, below the criteria for top marks. Eastside, which earned C's during the first two years of the accountability system, saw 44 percent of its fifth-graders score at the lowest level on the math test and appears headed for a D. To get a C or better, schools cannot have more than 40 percent at the lowest level. Eastside principal John Finney hadn't seen the scores and declined to comment Tuesday. Only one Hernando County school -- Moton Elementary in 1999 -- has been given a D. It pushed that grade up to a C in 2000. No Hernando County school has received an F, and none will this year, either. Under Florida's accountability system, schools that do well on the tests can receive incentive cash. Students in schools that consistently receive F's can become eligible for vouchers that they can use to pay for private school. Most principals and school district officials had not seen the test scores Tuesday. When he heard the news of his school's strong showing, Pine Grove Elementary principal Dave Dannemiller turned from the phone and shared it with his assistant principal, Pam Pickard. "Wonderful. All right," Dannemiller exclaimed. Pine Grove's consistently high test scores (last year it earned a B) tend to buck one of the most reliable axioms in education -- that schools serving many students from low-income families tend to score low on achievement tests. About 57 percent of Pine Grove's kids are poor enough to qualify for free or discounted lunches. Dannemiller said his staff, students and overall family atmosphere contributed to its success. But he cautioned that the state's grading system is not perfect. "This grading thing is okay but there sure is a fine line between an A school, B school and a C school," he said. Michael Tellone, the principal at Chocachatti Elementary, shares a similar view of the testing program despite his school's stellar performance: the highest math and writing scores in the county. "Schools are not alike in demographics or anything else. To assign schools a letter grade is overly simplistic," he said. Still, he's glad his school looks good on the scoring chart. In 1999-2000, its first year of operation, Chocachatti posted the highest scores among the county's 10 elementary schools. But it wasn't given a letter grade because grades are based on a school's improvement versus its past performance. There was probably some anxiety in his school about topping last year's performance, Tellone said. "It's like a recording artist who gets a hit record and wonders if they have another one in them," he said.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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