{"id":28909,"date":"2023-01-13T19:46:04","date_gmt":"2023-01-14T00:46:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=28909"},"modified":"2023-01-13T20:40:24","modified_gmt":"2023-01-14T01:40:24","slug":"polk-school-graduation-rate-slides-to-78-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/01\/13\/polk-school-graduation-rate-slides-to-78-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Polk School graduation rate slides to 78.3%"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Polk County Public Schools\u2019 graduation rate decreased to 78.3% during the 2021-2022 school year, according to data released Friday by the Florida Department of Education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The school district said in a news release late Friday afternoon that officials had anticipated a drop because of changes in graduation requirements during the pandemic. For two school years, 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, students were not required to pass state exams in order to graduate with diplomas. The exams once again became a requirement in 2021-2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For that reason, the district said that comparing the 2021-22 school year to 2018-19, the last year standardized tests were part of the graduation requirement, “represents a true ‘apples to apples’ comparison.” But last year’s graduation rate was still 2.9 percentage points lower than 2018-19, which was 81.2%.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Superintendent Frederick Heid<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cLet me be clear; it\u2019s absolutely unacceptable to see our graduation rate decrease,\u201d <\/strong>Superintendent Frederick Heid said in the release. \u201cNo one is satisfied with these results. No one is making excuses. Yes, the pandemic was an incredibly tough challenge, but we must keep moving forward and regain lost ground.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cStudents earning diplomas is the ultimate measure of success,\u201d Heid said. \u201cWe must increase the graduation rates for all schools, and ensure our diploma means students are best prepared for their careers and post-secondary education.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve already been aggressively providing additional support to our schools and students,\u201d Heid said. \u201cGuidance counselors and success coaches are working closely with students to help them complete their graduation requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Sometimes students just need guidance filling out paperwork or determining what courses they must complete. Teachers are also helping to identify students who struggle with exams, and we\u2019re providing extra tutoring and practice to improve their performance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The overall graduation rate in Florida was 87.3% for 2021-2022, the first time in more than a decade it declined. The rate had reached a 20-year peak of 90.1% the prior school year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Polk County Public Schools\u2019 graduation rate decreased to 78.3% during the 2021-2022 school year, according to data released Friday by the Florida Department of Education. The school district said in… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[4265],"class_list":["post-28909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-schools","tag-polk-school-graduation-rate-slides-to-78-3"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}