Highlands County reviews academic success data; officials highlight K‑2 reading work, math gains and growth in industry certifications

Highlands County School District officials on Wednesday convened a workshop to review Goal 1 — academic success — and presented state assessment results for every student who tested in the district this year.

The session set out how the district is using multiple measures — proficiency and rate of growth relative to state averages — to guide instruction. “The data that we'll be looking at today is the data from every student that tested within our district,” said Dr. Longshore, who opened the review and framed the presentation around both meeting state proficiency and exceeding the state’s rate of growth.

Why it matters: district leaders and principals said the patterns of growth and proficiency will shape curriculum choices, staffing and intervention priorities for the coming school year. Officials repeatedly credited sustained coaching, professional learning communities and collaborative “triads” of schools with helping teachers use frequent formative checks to adjust instruction.

District presentation and staff priorities District staff walked the board through performance by grade band and subject, emphasizing two measures: whether schools met or exceeded state proficiency (green in the district slides) and whether they exceeded the state’s rate of growth (purple). Officials said that metric pair helps identify where rapid acceleration is closing gaps even if absolute proficiency remains below state averages.

For K–2 reading, staff described a push toward evidence‑based foundational instruction and a move in some schools from Heggerty (practice‑focused phonemic work) to 95 Percent Group materials, which…