Miami-Dade Public Schools scores across-the-board gains on 2006 FCAT

MIDDLE SCHOOLS SHINE AMID OVERALL IMPROVEMENT;
GRADUATION TEST PASSING RATES CLIMB

MIAMI – Miami-Dade County Public Schools students in nearly every grade achieved significant academic gains in reading and math, results from the 2006 Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) released today showed.

Districtwide, the percentage of students in 4th through 10th grade who read proficiently rose in five of the seven grades tested. In addition, the reading proficiency rate in 5th grade remained stable after a large jump last school year.

The percentage of students reaching math proficiency – scoring at Levels 3-5 on FCAT – climbed in six of the seven grades tested.

Average scores in reading and math also rose in six of the seven grades when compared to 2005.

By far, the biggest gains came in the District’s middle schools and K-8 centers. The percentage of 6th graders reading proficiently shot up by 18 percentage points to 62 percent. In math, the proficiency rate rose nine percentage points to 49 percent.

The improvement for 7th graders also was large – a 10-percentage-point increase in reading and a four-percentage-point gain in math. As a result, more than half of the District’s 7th graders – 53 percent – were proficient readers for the first time. The math proficiency rate was 48 percent.

The results released by Gov. Jeb Bush and Education Commissioner John Winn showed that the percentage of Miami-Dade middle school students scoring at FCAT’s lowest level, Level 1, dropped by roughly the amount that the students scoring at Level 3-5 rose. This means that students were able to rise directly to proficiency, which the state considers Level 3 and above, rather than simply reaching the near-proficiency standard of Level 2.

In high school, the percentage of 10th graders passing FCAT, which is required for graduation, climbed to 46 percent in reading – a five-percentage-point increase over last year. In math, the passing rate rose to 71 percent from 68 percent in 2005.

Miami-Dade students continued to narrow the achievement gap between themselves and the rest of Florida in 2006. The District’s FCAT gains surpassed those for the state as a whole in reading in four grades and in math in six grades, despite better results statewide.

Tuesday’s release of FCAT results for 4th through 10th grade followed the release late last month of 3rd grade results. The percentage of 3rd graders in Miami-Dade County Public Schools who can read and do math jumped sharply in 2006, pushed higher for a second straight year by results from the District’s School Improvement Zone.

The percentage of 3rd graders reading at grade level rose to 71 percent – a 10-percentage-point increase over last year. In the 20 elementary schools in the School Improvement Zone, the percentage of students reading at grade level climbed by 17 percentage points. As a result, more than half of the Zone’s 3rd graders – 55 percent – now read at grade level. By comparison, about a third of Zone 3rd graders could read that well when the District launched the initiative in 2004. Identified based on chronic poor performance, Zone schools have longer school days and school years and use a uniform, highly structured instructional program that emphasizes literacy.

In math, the percentage of 3rd graders scoring at grade level rose to 69 percent, up by six percentage points over 2005. In the Zone schools, the percentage scoring at grade level rose by 10 points.

When taken together, the 3rd grade results and the 4th- through 10th-grade results released Tuesday show that the reading proficiency rate in 3rd through 10th grade rose to 51 percent – a six-percentage-point jump over 2005 that pushed the percentage of proficient readers in the District into a majority for the first time since the start of FCAT. In math, the District’s overall proficiency rate rose to 55 percent.

Four schools that have been under state scrutiny for “F” accountability grades last year – Homestead, Miami Central and Miami Edison senior highs and Holmes Elementary – each boosted FCAT results in 2006. Holmes saw gains in both reading and math in 3rd and 5th grade. The three high schools each saw improvement in 10th grade results, and Central and Edison recorded some gains in 9th grade as well.

The results released Tuesday were for all students and are not the ones used for accountability grades, which the state will release next month. Some special education and limited English proficient students’ results are excluded when the state calculates the schools’ grades.