Florida 4th in academic achievement

4th, 8th graders gain in math, reading exams, report shows

Florida ranks fourth in the nation for academic achievement, according to an annual education report released last week.

The Sunshine State did well in the Quality Counts report in large part because last year its fourth and eighth graders made strong gains on national math and reading exams. It was one of a few states to show improvements on those tests. The report, published by the education newspaper Education Week, attempts to grade states based on educational data.

It gave the nation as a whole a C grade on its “K-12 Achievement Index.” It said this “middling” grade represented “modest progress” during the past decade.

Massachusetts, as the top-ranked state, earned a B+ for achievement among its kindergarten-to-12th-grade students. New Jersey was next with a B, then Virginia with a B-, and Florida with a C+. The states at the bottom of the rankings were Louisiana and New Mexico, with D- grades, flollowed by Alaska, South Carolina and Oklahoma, which all got Ds.

Last year, Florida was ranked 11th for K-12 achievement, so it moved up seven places this year.

“It is no coincidence that Florida is leading the nation in K-12 student achievement,” Education Commissioner Pam Stewart said in a statement.

She said Florida’s strong academic standards — its version of Common Core — and school accountability rules get credit for the state’s success. They have resulted, she said, “in students being more prepared for future success than ever before.”

The rankings were based on results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, and Advanced Placement tests as well as high school graduation rates. They considered performance, improvement and equity — or the gaps between the scores of wealthier and poorer students.

In 2017, Florida was the only state to show gains on the NAEP math exams and one of just nine to make gains on NAEP reading, and it was those scores that were used in the report. A sampling of students take the national exams every two years.

The report said Florida was ranked 20th based on current performance but in the top five states for annual improvement and equity, earning it the overall fourth-place showing.

The report is typically published in Janu- ary, but this year the K-12 achievement section wasn’t released until September because NAEP scores were released later than

usual.

JACOB LANGSTON/ORLANDO SENTINEL Florida ranks fourth in the nation in the 2018 Quality Counts report, which evaluates states on their academic achievement and improvement.