North county schools place in top half of state or better

A ranking of Florida’s public schools released Monday placed all northern Okaloosa County schools firmly in the top half of the statewide roster. 

Several north county schools placed well within the top third or top quarter of Florida’s schools, and area students who go to Collegiate High School at Northwest Florida State College can proudly boast they attend Florida’s top-ranked high school.

“School’s not easy today. School is hard,” Okaloosa School District Deputy Superintendent of Operations Rodney Nobles said. “The accountability that the students and teachers are held to is difficult, but I think you can see it’s paying off.”

The state Department of Education ranked elementary and middle schools according to school grade points for the 2010-11 school year. Schools received one point for each percent of students who were enrolled for the full year, scored at grade level or higher on the FCAT, and made annual learning gains, for 800 possible points.

High schools are graded using the same criteria, then another 800 points were possible for criteria including graduation rates, accelerated coursework participation and performance, and readiness for postsecondary education.

Among top performing area schools, Antioch Elementary School was in the top 15 percent of statewide elementary schools with 616 grade points, ranking 279th out of 1,795 schools. Walker and Bob Sikes elementary schools landed in the top third with rankings of 513 and 595 respectively.

Davidson Middle School, with 594 grade points, ranked 111th out of 583 total Florida middle schools, placing it in the top 20 percent. Close behind was Shoal River Middle School, ranking 133rd with 587 grade points, safely landing in the top quarter of statewide middle schools.

Of 443 statewide high schools, Crestview High ranked 184th with an FCAT grade point of 503 and 656 high school component points, for a total of 1,159 points. Collegiate High School scored 711 FCAT points and a perfect 800 high school component points for 1,511 total points.

Baker School and Laurel Hill School ranked 22 and 23 respectively out of 65 statewide K-12 combination schools with 1,123 and 1,121 total school points. Baker School had 529 FCAT points and 691 high school component points, while Laurel Hill had 532 and 675 points respectively.

“In Okaloosa County, our teachers and our principals — the people who are actually on the front line doing the work — do a great job. The rankings across the county with all our schools shows that,” Nobles said.

“At the same time I think we all have become very adept at looking at our data year in and year out, seeing our strengths but also recognizing our weaknesses,” Nobles continued. “That’s what makes our public education system unique; we look at those weaknesses and work to overcome them.”

The Florida Education Association teachers’ union and other critics say schools can’t be judged solely on test scores and factors such as students’ socio-economic status should have been taken into account.

“We’re fortunate that we live in a county that has a high socio-economic factor, but we do have a lot of students whose families are struggling across the county,” Nobles said. “That does play into what you get out of a kid at school.

“But again, our teachers, our principals, recognize those things. You can look at numbers all day long but until you know what those numbers represent, the people those numbers are involved in, that’s when you make inroads, that’s when you really help. They translate that data into individual students’ needs.”

Among other county high schools, Niceville ranked 18, Fort Walton Beach ranked 46 and Choctawhatchee ranked 68. In middle schools, Ruckel (10), Destin (38), Lewis (42), Meigs (62) and Pryor (70) topped north county schools. Edge (121), Plew (140) and Bluewater (165) ranked above Crestview area elementary schools.