Amid a pandemic that greatly disrupted traditional methods of education, Dave Murphy, director of assessment and accountability for the Monroe County School District, reported to the school board on June 22 that the percentage of third-grade students reading at grade level had dropped by 11.4% from 2019 levels.
Murphy said the drop was âsignificantâ but also that he does not âthink it was as bad as some people fear,â being that some drop in academic performance may have been expected due to remote learning and other challenges of pandemic schooling.
Some schools had larger drops in reading levels than others. The largest was a 45.5% drop seen at the May Sands Montessori School in Key West, which had 100% of its third-graders reading at grade level pre-pandemic. Murphy noted that May Sands only has 11 third grade students and the small size skews the data.
With fewer than four months left of school this year, the Marathon and Key Largo school improvement plans, as well as board policy updates, student handbook, LGBTQ support guide and tentative school calendars, will be discussed at the Tuesday, Feb. 9, Monroe County School District board meeting at Coral Shores High School.
If school calendars are approved, students will return to school Aug. 12 for the 2021-2022 year and end May 27, then begin and end a day earlier in 2022-2023. The studentsâ school year has ended before the Memorial Day weekend for the past several years.
School improvement plans for Key Largo School and Marathon Middle and High School will be presented by Dr. David Murphy, the school districtâs executive director of assessment and accountability, at 4 p.m. Then, Principal Trisha Woods of Ocean Studies Charter School in Key Largo will share a video of its new school building and share enrollment and other data.