Chart courtesy The Argus Foundation. Data courtesy the Florida Department of Education.

The newest scores for the state, school districts and individual schools have been published by the Florida Department of Education for the 2022-2023 school year. This year marks the beginning of new standards and assessments across the state. The Argus Foundation has previously published the district and school data for the ‘20-‘21 and the ‘21-‘22 school years. We are now doing it again for the ‘22-‘23 school year.

There are both new standards and new forms of assessments to measure how the students are doing in these new standards. The new standards are called Benchmark for Excellent Student Thinking, or BEST. Students are assessed on the BEST standards using Florida Assessment of Student Thinking, FAST.

FAST has three progress monitoring windows. These include a baseline assessment at the beginning of the year called PM1, a mid-year assessment called PM2, and the end of year summative assessment to measure how well the student mastered BEST standards called PM3.

District and school scores have not been released with overall scores and grades, but district and school scores have been released in specific subjects. The Argus Foundation has restarted our “Sarasota Schools Data Dig” social media campaign to help the community understand the scores and how we compare to the state and other school districts. This data is important to understand where we are at and help our community voice their goals for the district.

The Argus Foundation has started our Data Dig campaign by releasing data on English Language Arts, ELA.

In ELA for Grades 3-8, Sarasota County Schools tied for fourth with Gilchrist County. St. Johns, Nassau, and Lafayette counties ended up ahead of Sarasota County as measured by the PM3 assessment. Out of the top ten districts, Sarasota County had the smallest growth from PM1 to PM3 at 16% improvement over the course of the school year.

When you focus on the pivotal year of third grade using the average scores, Sarasota tied for fourth in ELA. In front of Sarasota County for this measure was St. Johns, Nassau, and Baker counties. Sarasota County tied with Indian River and Liberty counties for fourth place. While this sounds like good news, the bar is low for all of the districts in the state. Sarasota County has 39% of its third graders below satisfactory or inadequate in English Language Arts.

When you look at individual schools in Sarasota County, 30% of our schools have more third graders who are below satisfactory or inadequate in ELA than are On-Grade-Level-or above. That amounts to ten schools in the county with over half of the kids not on grade level or above.

Let us jump ahead to 10^th grade. The numbers are getting worse in our county, 42% of our high schools have more 10th graders who are below satisfactory or inadequate in ELA than are On-Grade-Level-or above. That amounts to five high schools in the county with over half of the students not on grade level or above.

Here again, the school rankings sound good as Sarasota County was fifth in 10^th grade ELA average scores in the state. We are behind St. Johns, Gilchrist, Walton, and Okaloosa counties. However, Sarasota County has 42% of its 10^th graders below satisfactory or inadequate in English Language Arts. In less than a month, these kids will be starting their junior year, the most critical year when it comes to applying for college.

These numbers are just the beginning in terms of the data available. For more data dig releases, like and follow our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages. Data Digs will be posted Mondays and Thursdays at 10AM.

Christine Robinson is Executive Director of The Argus Foundation.

Chart courtesy The Argus Foundation. Data courtesy the Florida Department of Education.