Did you notice the numbers that the county can exhibit control over have greatly improved over the last few years. Supposedly our graduation rates have gone up and our suspensions and referrals are way down. Unfortunately these numbers don’t translate into improvement in areas that the district can’t control. Our FCAT and testing scores lag behind the rest of the state and somewhere between 60 and 70% of our grads have to take remedial classes at Florida State College.
Even our school grades rising can be manipulated by the home office. You see schools have gotten bonus points for kids being in advanced classes, them doing well in advanced classes or passing AP tests hasn’t mattered and as a result more kids many unprepared have been shoved into those classes.
When we pull back the veil of Duval County our problems go from bad to worse.
Let me not sugar coat it for you. Duval County has a lot of great things going on, even pockets of excellence but overall we are floundering and the main reason for this is not the federal government or the state though they have done us no favors, it is because we have had leadership more interested in protecting their niche, more concerned with massaging numbers not doing what is right.
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