The majority of Central Florida high schools earned a coveted A grade from the state this year. But that high mark doesn’t guarantee most of the schools’ students are performing A-grade work.
At Edgewater High School, the marquee was changed this week to proudly proclaim its freshly-minted A-rating, its first since 2011.
But less than 60% of Edgewater students passed the state’s language arts exams and less than 50% passed Florida’s algebra and geometry tests.
The Orlando school earned an A under a system many Floridians may not understand:
The state’s school grades are based not just on the percentage of students who pass state tests, but also on how many show improvement even if they do not score well on the exams. And as the number of A schools creeps upward, that’s ignited a debate on whether Florida is grading its schools effectively, and whether grade inflation is masking continued difficulties educating students.
More high schools in Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Lake counties earned A’s this year than in any recent year, with many propelled by “learning gains,” not large percentages of students acing Florida’s exams in math, language arts, social studies and science.
Two years ago, 11 of the area’s high schools got an A grade. In 2024, there were 23 A’s. This year, 32 got A’s.
Some argue the system masks true performance and fails to show the public that many students are struggling to master key academic subjects.
But others defend it, saying considering improvement rightly gives credit for the hard work of helping students make gains even if their test scores are not stellar. They note that students from low-income families typically struggle the most on state exams and without “learning gains” the only schools with top marks would be those that serve mostly students from privileged backgrounds.
“Learning gains are important, and I think that speaks a lot more to what you’re getting out of your students and what teachers are giving for their students,” said Anthony Cook, an Osceola County School Board member whose district includes Poinciana High School.
Poinciana earned an A this year — its first since the school opened in 1991 — after a decade of Cs, helped by student improvement. On the state language arts exams, 54% of its students passed.
About 85% of Poinciana High’s student population is considered economically disadvantaged, according to state data.
The education foundation founded by former Gov. Jeb Bush — who championed Florida’s A-to-F school grades that started in 1999 — wants to see a tougher grading system.
“The point of the school grade calculation is not so that everybody gets an A and kind of feels good about themselves, but rather that it’s a reliable and honest assessment of how schools are doing,” said Nathan Hoffman, the foundation’s senior legislative director.
Under the current system, schools with A grades can have very different percentages of their students passing state exams. At the perennially A-rated Hagerty High in Seminole County, for example, 76% of students passed the language arts exams. But at the newly A-rated Edgewater it was 58%.
Statewide, 28 schools got A grades despite at least half of their students not being proficient in language arts, while 56 schools got the top grade even though half or more of their students scored poorly in math. At 10 of the state’s A-rated schools, at least half the students scored poorly in both subjects.
The high marks for schools this year — 76% in Orange County and 71% statewide achieved an A or a B — could reignite a debate about whether Florida’s school grading scale is too lenient.
Debra Robinson, a former Palm Beach County School Board member who is now chairwoman of the county’s Coalition for Black Student Achievement, would welcome a change.
“What’s bad to me is that the school grades don’t accurately reflect how students are doing,” she said. “Students can earn learning gains at their school year after year without ever being proficient, and to me, that’s a problem.”
But in the early 2000s, the state issued grades based only on the percentage of students passing the exams. Many schools that served mostly low-income students were issued D’s and F’s, which many educators and parents found unfair.
Now many of those same schools are getting A’s and B’s and celebrating — even though a large number of students may still struggle on pass state tests.
Ocoee High, where 54% of students passed language arts exams and 46% passed math, announced its second-consecutive A rating in a Facebook post. Proud parents and alumni praised the schools and their staff for the improvements.
“Thank you Ocoee High School, the value of our homes look great with that A rating. We appreciate your dedication to student success,” one commenter wrote.
But that may be short lived.
Under state law, the grading scale must be toughened if more than 75% of schools in a particular category receive A’s and B’s, and 82% of high schools did this year.
In the current system, a school must receive 64% of available grading-scale points to get to an A and 57% of those points to get a B. Starting next year, they must get 65% of points to get an A and 60% to get a B.
The change would result in 53 A- and B-ranked schools dropping a letter grade if their performance next year were the same.
Some legislators would like to see the grading scale get a lot tougher. This past session, state Rep. Susan Valdes, R-Tampa, introduced a bill that would have made it dramatically more difficult for schools to get A’s or B’s.
The bill would have required a school to get 90% of the required points to get an A, 80% for a B, 70% for a C and 60% for a D.
“Florida school’s grading scale is so far below the most commonly understood meaning of an A, B, C, or D or F,” Valdes said it a committee meeting. “Grading schools on a curve has undoubtedly led to confusion and a disconnect between student performance and school performance.”
If Valdes’ proposed formula were in place this year, the number of A schools would have plummeted from 1,526 to 28. The number of F-rated schools would have skyrocketed from 10 to 1,546. Her bill got favorable committee votes but never made it to the House floor and was never considered by the Senate, and she did not respond to requests for comment on whether she’d try again next year.
Angie Gallo, the president of the Florida School Boards Association and an Orange County School Board member, said she doesn’t think raising the bar that high makes sense.
She wants to revamp what makes an A school, moving the focus away from standardized testing.
“Kids are doing some great things in schools that aren’t currently being measured,” Gallo said.
Gallo said she doesn’t put much stock into school grades and doesn’t think they accurately a school’s quality. The current grade system puts so much focus on state exams, she added, and not enough on career-readiness.
“We put too much emphasis on those test scores and not enough on the needs of the student,” Gallo said. “Do they really have the education they need to be successful?”
A spokesperson from the Florida Department of Education couldn’t be reached for comment, but state officials have given little indication they plan to push for a dramatic overhaul to the way schools are graded.
“The 2025 school grades are a reflection of the nation-leading education reforms that Florida has implemented,” outgoing Education Commissioner Manny Diaz said in a statement after school grades released.