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Former Gov. Jeb Bush’s recent essay in The 74 rightly reminds us that accountability is not a destination. Florida built its education reputation by measuring results, publishing them plainly and refusing to accept mediocrity.
That standard still matters. As the state’s education commissioner, I believe the state’s own assessment results provide a much clearer picture of the progress our students are making.
It’s true that Florida’s reading scores on NAEP are at their lowest point this century, and that the slide began before the pandemic, but that flattens a more complicated picture. In 2024, no state posted a statistically significant gain in Grade 4 reading, Grade 8 reading, or Grade 8 mathematics. The nation’s fourth graders are reading below their 2003 level.
Florida’s Grade 4 mathematics score rose between 2022 and 2024 and ranked among the highest in the country, statistically indistinguishable from Massachusetts. Florida’s fourth graders held steady on reading performance from 2019 to 2022 against the national post-COVID decline and ranked second. One NAEP cycle that happens to overlap the implementation of the state’s new B.E.S.T. standards and progress monitoring is not a verdict on either policy.
NAEP remains a useful national benchmark. But it is not a curriculum-aligned measure of what Florida students are taught, and it produces no student- or school-level results that educators or parents can act on.
State-level testing shows marked improvement. Since statewide progress monitoring began in 2022–23, 61% of students in grades 3–10 are on grade level in English Language Arts and 62% of students in grades 3–8 are on grade level in mathematics. That represents a 12-point gain in ELA — approximately 150,000 additional students — and a 9-point gain in mathematics or approximately 115,000 additional students.
These are not false positives. They reflect Florida students’ performance on the content that our classrooms are teaching, measured three times a year. The statutory school grading system is an index of achievement, showing learning gains, acceleration and graduation rates for all students, as well as the lowest performers. Florida’s statute does not allow a grade to be adjusted away from the points earned.
The high percentage of schools rated A and B are also not new: in 2006, 74% of schools earned an A or B under a less rigorous assessment and a learning-gains definition that awarded credit for some low-performing students. High schools this year face the highest threshold for an A rating in the history of the system.
The “honesty gap” argument depends on treating NAEP Proficient standard as synonymous with grade level. NAEP’s own materials reject that equivalence, stating that it signifies competency over challenging material; it is not the standard Florida, or any state, uses to define grade-level performance. Nationwide, 30% of fourth graders scored at or above NAEP Proficient in reading in 2024. Massachusetts, the highest-performing state, reached 40%. Neither figure means that 60% or 70% of the remaining students cannot read on grade level.
Florida’s largest Grade 4 NAEP gains occurred between 2002 and 2007, when the gap between the state’s “on grade level” designation and NAEP Proficient was wide. Aligning Florida’s standard to a national label the assessment’s authors disclaim would not restore honesty. It would outsource Florida’s standard-setting process.
Florida has not taken its foot off the gas. In recent years, the state has adopted three successive, more rigorous standards systems and three corresponding assessments. Learning gains were rewritten so schools no longer receive credit for students who remain at the lowest performance level.
Common Core standards were replaced with the Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking. A single end-of-year test was replaced with progress monitoring that gives teachers, families and students information they can use during the year. The statutory escalator raises the grading scale when performance rises. These are not the actions of a state content to coast.
None of this is an argument for complacency. The escalator itself is worth a serious review. Sustained improvement on state assessments does not eliminate the need to ensure that high school grades, acceleration components and the automatic raising of the bar continue to identify schools that need support. Parents should be able to understand whether their children are on track without becoming data analysts.
That work can proceed without converting a national NAEP result into an indictment of Florida’s system or treating the state’s own measures as inherently less trustworthy.
Florida became a national leader by measuring what it taught and reporting the results plainly. It can continue to do so — raising the bar where the evidence supports it.
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