School grades in 40 of Florida's 67 school districts, including some in Orange, Osceola, Lake and Volusia counties, were miscalculated and have been bumped upward, the Florida Department of Education announced late Friday.
The department provided little information about what led to the revised grades, saying only that they were identified as part of "continuous review process."
Statewide, 213 campuses, including 17 in Orange, six in Volusia, three in Osceola and two in Lake, will get new and improved marks. The change also means Osceola's entire district grade will go from a C to a B, the department said.
Volusia Superintendent Margaret Smith said she was called earlier Friday and told about the changes to her six campuses but given little explanation about what had happened.
While it was "good news" for the involved schools, Smith said, it was also "disconcerting" to realize there might have been mistakes given the high-stakes nature of Florida's school grading system.
The grades for elementary and middle schools, released last week, are based largely on students scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Schools with poor grades face state oversight and must offer their students transfers to better-performing campuses.
"School grades are important to students, parents, teachers, principals, administrators and the community," said Education Commissioner Gerard Robinson in a statement. "And, while I am pleased that the continuous review process has resulted in better grades, we will continue to look for ways to improve the grade calculation process."
State Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee, said he fears the revised grades, coming on the heels of mounting criticism of Florida's school accountability system this year, will undermine the public's confidence.
"People are going to question the validity and the reliability of the system," said Montford, who also runs the Florida Association of District School Superintendents.
This year's FCAT writing scores, released in May, were surprisingly low, and that ramped up criticism of how Florida's uses standardized tests to make many key education decisions. Since then, school boards across the state, and the Florida School Boards Association, have passed resolutions criticizing Florida's test-based accountability system.
Though school districts have always had the opportunity to appeal school grades, Friday's announcement of a state-driven change to so many grades -- and so soon after their release -- was unusual.
Superintendents across the state began reporting the news Friday afternoon, with Hillsborough County schools putting out a release that "school grades for many schools had been miscalculated."
The education department, however, did not respond to questions about the grade revisions until it released a statement after 10 p.m.
The revisions involve 8 percent of Florida's graded elementary and middle schools. Each of the 213 schools moved up one letter grade. In Orange, for example, Robinswood Middle went from a D to a C, while Eccleston Elementary went from a B to an A. The affected districts include most of Florida's largest, including Broward and Miami-Dade.
Osceola was one of nine districts whose overall district grade bumped up.
When the department released grades for elementary and middle schools -- and the state's school districts -- last week, they were lower than last year's grades. That's because Florida used a new, tougher grading formula this year. High school grades are to be released later in the year.
The local schools with improved grades are:
In Orange: Nap Ford Community, Oakland Avenue and Passport charter schools, Freedom, Meadow Woods and Robinswood middle schools, and Cheney, Clay Springs, Dover Shores, Eccleston, Lovell, McCoy, Orlo Vista, Ridgewood Park, Riverdale, Riverside and Wyndham Lakes elementary schools.
In Osceola: Westside K-8, Pleasant Hill and Partin Settlement elementary schools.
In Lake: Sawgrass Bay and Groveland elementary schools.
In Volusia: Chisholm, George W. Marks, Read-Patillo, Spirit and Turie T. Small elementary schools and The Reading Edge Academy, a charter school.