Overcoming the denominator

The Ocali Charter High School is shown on West Anthony Road in Ocala, Fla. on Tuesday, February 11, 2025. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2025.

The Marion County School Board speculates that “it is going to be hard to be successful” in improving school grades for smaller, student-populated charter schools that received failing grades for the 2023-24 school year.

Two charter schools each presented an “Academic Corrective Action Plan” to the school board on Feb. 6, in an effort to bring the schools up to a passing grade in the coming year. Ocali Charter High School received a “D,” and McIntosh Area School received an “F.”

Ocali Charter High School Executive Director Theresa Matthews presented first with Ocali’s new plan to raise the school’s 2024-2025 academic year grade.

“Our school grades are directly correlated to the success of our teachers,” she said. “Highly qualified, highly impactful teachers, who motivate students and insist that students master content is where we find our greatest success.”

School Choice Director Stephen Ayres read aloud to the board that “Florida Statutes and State Board of Education rules require lower-performing charter schools to develop and implement strategies to raise student performance.” Ayres said the director or principal of these schools must present the deficiencies and their new plans to the “sponsor,” the school board.

According to the Florida Department of Education’s 2023-24 Guide to Calculating School Grades, the school grading formula included these student success measures: achievement, learning gains, graduation, acceleration success, and maintaining a focus on students who need the most support.

The report shows that a percentage can be found to determine school grades by adding the earned points from each measure and dividing by the total possible points. Middle and high schools that earn below 44% score a “D” or an “F,” while elementary schools need at least 41% to earn a “C,” according to the guide’s grading scales.

As the Ocali Charter School expanded to serve high school students in August 2023, it has no prior grades to compare its progress. Matthews said Ocali serves 9^th—11^th grade students at this time, so it does not currently have the graduation or acceleration rates that could improve its grade.

Matthews summarized the improvement plan in three “important” areas of attention, starting with strategic planning and staffing.

Matthews said new benefit packages that model the school district’s current offerings were introduced this year as part of the plan to attract the “best” educators available to Ocali. She said she feels strongly about the three new hires who joined the staff this year. Only two teachers from the charter’s opening year were retained.

The second point Matthews mentioned was to ensure that teachers focus on content mastery and are not distracted by the behavioral issues that disrupt the classroom.

“Fights aren’t happening at Ocali,” she said. “Part of that is keeping a real handle on the derailing of instructional time and being true to the work that we’re doing, and that’s mastery of content ultimately.”

Concluding the plan, Matthews said the last point of student motivation and parent engagement is a “doozy.” She said the goal is for students to realize how “high stakes” passing tests and benchmarks is to reach the graduation requirements.

“Really helping students of that age bracket to understand what doors will close if you don’t get a high school diploma, and why these tests are so important in order to prove that you’ve mastered content to the level of acceptability to get your high school diploma,” Matthews said.

She said that with the smaller size of the charter school in comparison to the populated public schools in Marion County, if a few students don’t care about a test at Ocali, it is a problem. That is why the high school has developed parent engagement programs to help parents be attentive to their students’ journeys.

Board Member Allison Campbell said Ocali now has a baseline, and with this grade being the first it has received from the state, there is nowhere to go but up.

“I appreciate that we do have an alternative small high school that is a public charter school here in Marion County, and I know a couple of families there that love that we have that option for their students as well,” Campbell said.

School Board Member Sarah James said “It is going to be hard to be successful” for these smaller schools, as a school grade is one big math equation, and small schools face a smaller denominator due to their overall student population size.

“I fully believed that your grade was a reflection of your denominator,” James told Matthews.

Matthews said that despite the numbers, she and the principal take full responsibility for Ocali’s school grade.

“I appreciate that you identified that the mathematics were against us, but we do not take this lightly and I want each and every one of you to know it is our commitment to always provide the highest level of academic excellence for the students that make a personal choice to go to our small school,” Matthews said.

Presenting after Matthews, McIntosh Area School Principal David Friedlander told the board why he believes the elementary school grade resulted in an “F” after just passing with a “C” the year prior.

“The size of the overall student population and enrollment per grade critically affected our school’s results,” Friedlander said.

He explained that out of the 46 new students who enrolled during the 2023-24 school year, only 12 students from third to fifth grade were counted for McIntosh’s overall grade. Friedlander said that the student population per grade was also not high enough to consider growth in the overall score outcome.

After the school grade result, he said McIntosh personally conducted its own schoolwide student performance analysis, which identified additional “gaps.” Friedlander said leadership then adjusted personnel, curriculum, student support, family engagement and school day schedules to fill them.

“In retrospect, we were not able to overcome the new student influx that brought significant needs that MAS identified, after the ‘PM1,’ Progress Monitoring, ‘or PM2’ assessment,” he said. “Coupled with score tabulations not allowing for growth for smaller school populations.”

Friedlander said tutoring, skill reinforcement, staff instructional techniques and overall student achievement goals are being applied through the improvement plan. The school is considering more clubs to add enhanced student enrichment and parent engagement, and students have an option to join the new Boy Scouts of America Cub Scout pack near the school.

“The 2024-25 student body enrollment is currently at 45, and of that population, 44% are new to the school,” he said. “I also would like to add, at this point, that out of that population, approximately 25% of our students have either an (Individualized Education Plan) or a 504 plan.”

IEP and 504 plans provide accommodations and specialized instruction for students with disabilities. The state receives additional funding for students eligible for an IEP plan, according to FDOE.

Campbell said she loves the continuous attendance and enrollment challenge discussions, but getting the number of students ready that they need to raise the school grade will be tough.

James highlighted the denominator she mentioned to Matthews earlier. “I think the denominator has consistently been the struggle, at least for the last couple of years, for you all because there is not a lot of students to maximize your school grade and also as you said you can’t even participate in every bucket of the school grade calculation.”

She said McIntosh is already hamstrung meeting tight requirements and serves a unique demographic, making it difficult to get a passing school grade.

“We are collectively putting you in a position where it is going to be hard to be successful based on school grade, and I wish school grade was not calculated the way it was calculated because it is not a reflection of the work that happens on our campuses,” James said.

Next Steps

Board Member Nancy Thrower said it is difficult not to have a say in a school’s grade because the board is at the local level. She said the state will intervene if McIntosh fails two consecutive years, and it will not be “pretty.”

“I’ve been around long enough to know how important McIntosh Area School has been to a significant but small number of learners that were getting left behind, and that is the heartbreaker for me as an educator,” Thrower said.

Ayres said the schools will continue to be monitored to ensure they carry out their plans. He said a school that does not receive a passing grade three years straight has to present a corrective action plan annually, and on the third year, will need to do an improvement plan.

“If a school gets, as Mrs. Thrower mentioned, two consecutive “F” grades in a row, then the state will cancel the charter,” Ayres said.