Speaking before about 800 educators and business and political leaders at the Kravis Center in downtown West Palm Beach, Avossa said that schools’ money and resources would be redirected to focus on four new goals approved by the school board Wednesday.
Those goals are: raising the portion of third-graders reading at grade level from 51 to 75 percent, raising the high school graduation rate for district-operated schools from 85 to 90 percent, and increasing high school and post-graduate readiness.
To illustrate the disparities, he laid out several statistics that illustrated what he called telling markers of which students succeed and which don’t.
Third-graders who score in the highest level on the state’s reading test have a 98 percent chance of graduating, he said, while those who score in the lowest level have just a 64 percent likelihood.
Eighth-graders who receive three or more suspensions in a year have only a 1 in 3 chance of graduating, he said. And less than 60 percent of students who speak English as a second language go on to graduate high school on time.
While Palm Beach County is the highest-performing of Florida’s large school districts by many measures, he said that too many students struggle. The most challenged group: poor male students who grew up speaking a language other than English, he said.
Plans for tackling the new goals are still being worked out, he said, but include concentrating more resources on teaching reading in students’ early years, identifying at-risk students before they are suspended, revamping teacher training, and expanding Pre-K programs for some of the county’s neediest students.
The event was hosted by the Education Foundation of Palm Beach County and the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County.