{"id":328799,"date":"2026-07-03T21:38:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T21:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/328799\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T21:38:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T21:38:07","slug":"swfl-school-grades-are-out-heres-how-your-district-ranked-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/328799\/","title":{"rendered":"SWFL school grades are out. Here&#8217;s how your district ranked | State"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SOUTHWEST FLORIDA, Fla. (WINK)\u2014 Florida just released its latest school grades and some local districts are celebrating big wins.<\/p>\n<p>This year&#8217;s results show several Southwest Florida districts moving in the right direction. Collier, Charlotte and Glades counties all earned an &#8220;A,&#8221; while Lee and Hendry counties received a &#8220;B.&#8221; DeSoto County earned a &#8220;C.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Charlotte County had an extra reason to celebrate, earning its first &#8220;A&#8221; district grade in 15 years.<\/p>\n<p>Heather Shaughnessy, a Charlotte County mom who moved from Boston six years ago, said school grades played a big role in where her family chose to live.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The first thing we checked was all school districts to find out where a good area was and you know what our schooling options were,&#8221; Shaughnessy said.<\/p>\n<p>She said the district&#8217;s latest grade came as a surprise.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m blown away by that, because when we moved down here, they were not an A,&#8221; Shaughnessy said.<\/p>\n<p>Statewide, 76 percent of Florida schools earned an &#8220;A&#8221; or &#8220;B&#8221; this year, up from 71 percent last year, according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fldoe.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Department of Education<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But as more schools earn top marks, some education advocates say it may be time to raise the bar. The Foundation for Florida&#8217;s Future says when more than three-quarters of schools earn an &#8220;A&#8221; or &#8220;B,&#8221; it raises questions about whether the grading system accurately reflects student achievement.<\/p>\n<p>A 10th grader from Lee County said a letter grade can only tell you so much about what happens inside a classroom.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think that, like, the reflection of the grades isn&#8217;t really of the individual students,&#8221; the student said. &#8220;It&#8217;s based off of like which teachers you get.&#8221; She added, &#8220;Obviously, students are different too, like we&#8217;re really hard to teach. It&#8217;s all kind of just like what bunch you get, like put with and what cards you get dealt.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The state says school grades are based on factors including student achievement, learning gains, graduation rates and college and career readiness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SOUTHWEST FLORIDA, Fla. (WINK)\u2014 Florida just released its latest school grades and some local districts are celebrating big&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,4250,853,7353,7084,28,31888,14831,356,1521],"class_list":["post-328799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-charlotte","tag-charlotte-county","tag-collier","tag-desoto-county","tag-florida","tag-glades","tag-hendry","tag-lee-county","tag-southwest-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}