What will it take for Manatee schools to earn an A?

On the first day of school Aug. 12, Jason Wysong, the superintendent of the School District of Manatee County, visited two elementary schools, a middle and high school.

Throughout the day, he went from class to class, and as the day went on, he noticed the teachers moving on from addressing routines and classroom and school policies to instruction. 

Every minute of instruction in the school year counts. 

After seeing the district make successful gains in every academic component considered in district grading, the only reason the district didn’t receive an A rating was because the Florida Department of Education changed the grading system.

The district received a B rating and was only two percentage points shy of becoming an A-rated district. 

Derek Jensen, the deputy superintendent of instruction for the district, said the district would have been an A if the state didn’t include learning gains as new grading components. 

So what will it take for the School District of Manatee County to finally become an A district?

Jensen and Wysong both said the answer is sustaining the successes and gains from last school year. 

The district had the most schools receive an A rating at 24 schools since the 2012-2013 school year when it had 23 A schools. The district had 11 B schools, 25 C schools and four D schools in 2023-2024. 

The district saw improvements in all achievement categories, including reading, math, social studies, science, middle school acceleration, college and career acceleration and graduation rate. 

Third grade reading proficiency, which has been a priority for members of the School Board of Manatee County, increased from 50% in 2022-2023 to 54% in 2023-2024. 

Jensen said the district’s successes are a testament to the hard work of teachers, school leaders, students and their families. 

“We’re on a positive trajectory, and our students and teachers are putting in the effort,” Jensen said. “It’s about continuing that momentum, building upon it, continuing to grow our expertise and capacity under this new state assessment, under these new benchmarks and standards and continuing to support students and families as we work toward mastery.”

Even with its achievements in 2023-2024, Jensen said the district continues to have work to do but it’s moving in the right direction. 

“Everyone sees a vision and a path toward continuing to support our students toward excellence and toward being an A rated school district,” Jensen said.

If the district continues to build on the foundation that was set in Wysong’s first year as superintendent, Jensen and Wysong both said finally receiving the A the district has been longing for will be in the district’s reach. 

Academic focuses

The School Board of Manatee County has set its eyes on increasing the number of the third graders who are proficient in reading.

The district has made incremental gains, jumping from 47% proficiency in 2021-2022 to 50% in 2022-2023 to 54% in 2023-2024.

To some, 54% might seem disheartening, but Jensen said the percentage needs to be contextualized. The highest performing districts in the state are in the mid and high 60s, he said. 

There are only two districts — St. Johns County School District and Sarasota County Schools — have a third grade English language arts achievement score of above 70%. Of the 67 districts in Florida, 46 districts, including Manatee, had a 54% or higher third grade English language arts achievement. 

Jensen said the test measures not only basic reading skills but also comprehension and analysis. 

“Students are being asked very complex questions about analyzing a plot, theme or central idea,” Jensen said. “We have very high expectations for our third graders, and I believe with the right support, they can meet those expectations. … We need that number (54%) to be much higher because we know when students are proficient in third grade, it leads to strong, long term academic and life outcomes for them.”

Photo by Liz Ramos

Jensen said community initiatives and partnerships assist the district in supporting early literacy programs. From Soar in 4 to the Rotary Club of Lakewood Ranch’s Books for Kids and Books for Kids Kindergarten programs, Jensen said the programs support families to be their students’ first teacher or provide volunteers to serve as tutors for students, especially in Title I schools. 

The programs are part of laying an infrastructure for literacy support in kindergarten through second grade that hopes that it will translate into higher third grade achievement scores.

Wysong said a majority of last year’s kindergartners, who are now first graders, were reading on grade level by the end of the year. He said those students are on a trajectory to produce the highest third grade scores in the district’s history. 

Another focal point for the district is on the opposite end of the K-12 spectrum: graduation rates. The district sits at 82% of seniors graduating high school, but Wysong said the number should be closer to 90%. 

To get there, Wysong said the district will have more “tailored programs for students with unique circumstances” to provide options to meet students’ needs. He said the needs of students at Lakewood Ranch High School, which has a 97% graduation rate, are going to be different than those at Bayshore High School, which has a 72% graduation rate. 

Science, particularly in fifth and eighth grades, and social studies also will be a focus for the district. 

Jensen said the new textbooks and instructional materials in science and social studies the district has will help support the instructional work the district is putting into civics and U.S. history achievement. 

Moving forward

The district is focused on sustained growth through various methods.

The work began over the summer when Wysong met one-on-one and in small groups with principals. 

Jensen also tours schools and visits classrooms with other instructional district-level administrators and the principals to see first-hand every day instruction. His instructional leadership team meets every week to pour over data, whether it’s the latest student achievement data, attendance data, discipline data or more. 

Jensen said teachers are utilizing the state’s progress monitoring system for the Florida Assessment of Student Thinking. Students are tested three times per year, and teachers receive results swiftly, allowing them to adjust their teaching and approach students as individuals to ensure every student is making learning gains. Previously, it would take weeks to receive assessment results. 

New this year is educational rounds. Similar to the medical field, principals and assistant principals in small groups will visit each others’ campuses to build their “capacity as leaders,” Jensen said. 

“As a school leader, oftentimes, you’re so focused on your own school that it can be refreshing and enlightening to go to a few other schools and see how those schools do different things,” he said. “Being able to bring back the best of those things to your own school and faculty will only help drive our student outcomes going forward.”

Principals will visit schools across different grade levels, meaning an elementary principal will visit a middle school or a high school principal will visit an elementary school. 

“Mr. Jensen and I both feel honored and humbled to get to visit every school and to get to understand how it all fits together, and we want other people to have that opportunity to see that,” Wysong said. “When our elementary and middle school leaders and teachers send us ninth graders who are reading and doing math on grade level, it sets up that on-time graduation rate. The high school graduation rate is a system graduation rate. Yes, the mathematics of it is about how a student does in grades nine through 12, but it’s really a metric that tells you the health of the whole system.”