FCAT Results Point to Honor Roll District

Oops, they did it again.

Gulf County Schools again shone in this year's taking of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.

There were some nettlesome areas, particularly reading at Port St. Joe High School and science scores across the district, but overall the scores indicate that Gulf County Schools will once again represent an honor roll district.

"Everybody pretty much improved again," said Superintendent of Schools Tim Wilder. "Every school has improved or stayed the same except Port St. Joe High School."

School grades, on which some funding and bragging rights are staked, should be announced by the Florida Department of Education in the next several weeks or so.

Last year the district had three "A" schools, all in Port St. Joe, but this year the bounty looks to be spread around a bit with all three Wewahitchka schools either taking a step toward an "A" or reaching that mountaintop.

In the two main portions of the FCAT results released most recently, the math and reading scores for grades 3-10, the district kept astride or in front of state averages nearly across the board.

In grades 3-6, the district average exceeded state averages in math in grades 4-6 and third-graders were just behind the state average, 337-334.

The FCAT is scored 100 to 500 with a mean average score of 300 or above indicating that students are achieving, on the test alone, at or above what would be expected of their grade level.

Otherwise of note among the math scores in grades 3-6 is that not only were district students consistently ahead of state averages, improvement from last year was demonstrated in every grade but fifth-grade, where the district score average fell by a single point.

To put a finer point on that arc, consider that since last year, and since 2001, the number of county students in grades 3-10 scoring in the lowest quartile in the FCAT math portion has dropped while the number of students scoring at or above grade level has steadily risen.

Those same trends are evident on the reading portion of the FCAT for the same grade levels.

Across the board, the average scores for Gulf County students were ahead of the state average - by a wide margin in the case of sixth-grade - and county students also showed steady increases in the number scoring at or above grade level and decreases in the percentage of students in the lowest quartile.

"When you break it all down and (aggregate the scores) like the state does it, it looks pretty good," Wilder said. "I was real pleased overall."

On the reading portion of the test, those county students in the upper grades did not place the same distance between themselves and the state averages, but the district averages were still ahead of the state in three of four grades between grades 7-10.

One problem evident in the scores for the upper grades, though, is that reading scores retreated among high school sophomores, particularly at Port St. Joe High School where the reading average score fell by six points.

Again, county students show, compared to last year and spanning back to 2001, steady improvement in the percentage of students who achieve at or above grade level and the percentage of those in the lowest quartile, but the drop in reading scores at Port St. Joe High School, which had a rare "A" for a high school last year was disconcerting to Wilder.

And in math, the district's average score in the upper grade levels was consistently behind the state average save for one grade, high school sophomores who outpaced the state average by five points. On the other side of the coin, county seventh-graders averaged six points behind students around the state.

Again, though, a short-term and long-term snapshot - comparisons to last year and to the 2001 - spotlight improvements the district has made in increasing the percentage of students achieving at or above grade level and decreasing the percentage of students in the lowest quartile.

  "I could not be prouder of our people and our students," Wilder said. "Especially with all that went on this year."

There is a rub that makes the county's FCAT scores even more palatable.

This was a year which started with the district shedding more than 40 jobs. The possibility of not making payroll in the spring was a real threat.

A push for an additional mill referendum was, for as many as 40 more employees of the district, a campaign to maintain employment as the district wrestled with almost 6 percent of funding cuts during the school year.

"That is the most impressive thing, we did this in one of the toughest school years you could even imagine," Wilder said. "I could not be prouder of everybody in our school system."

Science scores were another matter entirely. The district average scores in those grades in which the science test is administered - grades 5, 8 and 11- remain unimpressive, but they are also ahead of state averages at all three grade levels and following the trends in math and reading in seeing a greater percentage of students achieving at or above grade level and a lesser percentage in the lowest quartile.

"Our science continues to be low but the state average is low," Wilder said. "But I don't care about the state averages. We are not an average district. I just want us to get better."

Wilder noted that the gap between white and minority students in the district was closing, that the district is among those who can be numbered as testing 98 percent or more of its students and that "we think we are among the leaders in the state," alluding to counties of similar size, population and school enrollment.

"When you break it out we did pretty good," Wilder said. "The bottom line is that there is improvement. There is improvement in five of six schools. That's what you want to see."

•·           The district received another $600,000 in federal stimulus funds, an addition to the $395,000 already received for Title I schools, or those which have at least 50 percent of the students on free or reduced lunches.

The money, however, is being called "stabilization" funds by the Florida Department of Education because they are intended to help stabilize school budgets rocked by state lawmakers this past spring.

In real terms, Gulf County sustained a 1.83 percent cut in state funding in January and the recent legislative session brought another cut of 4 percent, the second-largest for any district in the state.

That is a near 6 percent cut in funding since the first of the year, on top of a 2 percent cut late last calendar year.

The new stimulus dollars will not impact the workforce, the passage of the one-mill additional operating levy in the spring was aimed in that direction, but the funds allow the district to bolster its rainy day fund and sustain some programs.

"Really, it is to (balance) all the cuts the state has given us," Wilder said. "With the referendum, that money is a good thing."