Studer Community Institute

It can be done: a look at bright spots in education

February 22, 2015
/ Studer Community Institute staff
/ education

[sidebar] This is the second of a three-part report on local education by the staffs of the Studer Community Institute and PensacolaToday.com. [/sidebar] West Florida High School is Escambia County’s only consistent “A”-rated school, with test scores and graduation rates higher than all other county high schools. While the School District’s overall graduation rate reached 66 percent last year, West Florida’s graduation rate — at 94 percent — is one of the highest in the U.S. Hundreds of miles northeast of Pensacola, North Charleston High School in South Carolina has shown some of the highest gains in test scores and graduation rates in the state. With a minority enrollment of 95 percent, and nearly all students eligible for free or reduced-price meals, North Charleston is shining a bright light in education.

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In part 1:

Springtime in Florida means one thing — FCAT

But this year, the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test — the test used to measure students’ learning gains and to evaluate teacher’s performance — is not the test it used to be. The official state standardized test is now the Florida Standards Assessment. It replaces the previous versions of the state standardized test and will measure student performance in the Common Core-themed curriculum Florida schools have been using in recent years. As Florida schools turn to the new test, schools are left with 16 years of data accumulated in the FCAT era, which was a centerpiece of Gov. Jeb Bush’s push to reform public schools. The Studer Community Institute launched this series of stories to look at how Pensacola metro area schools had fared under that reform effort, the bright spots that were unveiled and the work that remains ahead to help our students, our schools and our community improve. [gap height="10"]

Coming up in part 3:

Building a better reader

Experts agree that the key to building a good student is building a strong reader. Increasingly, research suggests a pivotal time to influence a child’s reading ability is between the ages of 0-3, which is often long before a child enters a classroom. In the third installment of the Studer Community Institute’s education report, we looked at the growing body of research that supports the importance of early learning, the importance of getting parents involved in the learning process at all ages, and at two programs working now in the Pensacola metro area to help bridge that gap.

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