School Grades Will be Released Friday

School grades for the 2012-2013 academic year will be released Friday, but not after the grading formula had been tweaked. At a State Board of Education meeting in June, superintendents from Hillsborough and Miami-Dade counties expressed concerns that schools in their districts would suffer huge grade drops due to a change in the grading formula.

Commissioner of Education Tony Bennett then formed a task force to take a deeper look at the grading formula. Bennett then recommended extending a safety net so that schools wouldn't drop more than one letter grade in a year.

He also advisedending the practice of transferring the test scores of students attending special education centers back to their home schools. Bennett's recommendations marked a second time that Florida's grading formula has undergone eleventh-hour changes. Last year, board members changedwriting exam cut scores due to poor student performance.