Rick's Blog

Race to Top did not work, Brownsville, Warrington schools continue to fail

Rick Outzen

In 2011, the Escambia County School District was awarded an $8.3 million Race to the Top grant. The district was one of 35 in the state that received a grant. The funds were supposed to be transformative helping our most economically-disadvantaged students.

Gulf Power CEO Susan Story wrote in an viewpoint supporting the grant that of the “half of the $8 million would be targeted toward low-income students.”

The $8.3 million was to be used to implement three Race to the Top initiatives:

Seven years since the award, Escambia County has failed to turn around any of its lowest-achieving schools. The number of schools has increased.  As we reported earlier, nearly half of the public elementary schools in Escambia County are on the state’s 300 Low Performing Elementary Schools list. Half of the district’s middle schools are in the bottom 10 percent in the state.

Low-income students are still struggling, and Superintendent Malcolm Thomas appears to be have little expectation of improving their schools improving.

In an interview on WUWF radio: “If you really look at those schools, their zip code is probably all the same,” Thomas said, referencing the corridor of Escambia County that includes Brownsville and Warrington. “When you move out of that area, you don’t have as many problems with school grades; they’re making A’s and B’s as you would expect.”

We looked at the fourth grade Language Arts scores of the district’s lowest performing schools and found little progress has been made over the past three years.

Nearly 90 percent of the fourth graders at Montclair aren’t proficient in the language arts subjects. Weis and Holm have 80 percent below the standard.

 

Montclair
Language Arts 1 2 Below Std
2016 57 24 81
2017 64 23 87
2018 39 50 89
C. A. Weis
Language Arts 1 2 Below Std
2016 70 19 89
2017 45 38 83
2018 57 23 80
Reinhardt Holm
Language Arts 1 2 Below Std
2016 55 21 76
2017 30 30 60
2018 45 35 80
Warrington
Language Arts 1 2 Below Std
2016 70 16 86
2017 56 19 75
2018 41 39 80
Navy Point
Language Arts 1 2 Below Std
2016 33 31 64
2017 40 26 66
2018 52 25 77
Oakcrest
Language Arts 1 2 Below Std
2016 48 29 77
2017 53 21 74
2018 43 30 73
Global Learning
Language Arts 1 2 Below Std
2016 52 23 75
2017 39 37 76
2018 42 29 71
O.J. Semmes
Language Arts 1 2 Below Std
2016 39 39 78
2017 54 26 80
2018 38 31 69
Sherwood
Language Arts 1 2 Below Std
2016 49 32 81
2017 22 23 45
2018 42 27 69
Ensley
Language Arts 1 2 Below Std
2016 38 28 66
2017 40 31 71
2018 37 26 63
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