South Florida school districts again earn top grades as post-pandemic statewide scores surge

School districts in South Florida held onto their “A” ratings for the 2024-25 academic year, signaling a strong rebound from COVID-driven learning disruptions.

The high scores, released by the Florida Department of Education, coincide with a broader statewide improvement in public school performance.

Miami-Dade, the state’s most populous county, showed the strongest results, with 63% of schools receiving “A” grades, up from 52% last year. Only two schools in the district received “D” grades, half the number in 2024, and none earned an “F.”

Broward held onto the “A” grade it earned last year, its first since 2011, with 53% of the county’s 292 traditional and charter schools receiving an “A,” up from 42% the previous year.

Notably, no schools in the district received a “D” or “F” rating.

Palm Beach County, meanwhile, saw 47% of its schools earn “A” grades, up from 41%. Just two schools received “D” ratings, down from six “D”-rated schools last year, and none received an “F.”

Across the state, 28 of Florida’s 67 school districts received “A” grades, a six-school uptick. That included Duval County, which scored its first “A” grade ever.

Gov. Ron DeSantis lauded the achievement during a Monday news conference at Oceanway Elementary in Jacksonville in which he highlighted that 71% of graded schools in the state received “A” or “B” grades, up from 64% in 2024.

The change was positive across the board, with 4% more elementary schools, 9% more middle schools and 10% more high schools receiving “A” ratings than last year.

“In raw numbers, that means nearly 200,000 more students are enrolled in ‘A’ and ‘B’ schools in the past academic year than in the previous academic year,” he said.

Thirty-one school districts got a “B,” eight got a “C” and no districts received “D” or “F” grades.

The Governor credited a tighter focus on education under his administration and deprioritizing “this one end-of-the-year test” that he said was previously “the sole measure of how these schools were doing, how the students were doing.”

Instead, the state shifted to a progress monitoring system now in its third year that charts how students are doing academically three times throughout the year.

The results, DeSantis said, speak for themselves.

“We’re continuing to see statewide improvements,” he said. “We believe in innovating. We believe in adapting to changing circumstances.”