State Data Use Spotlight Update: Florida

In a previous state data use spotlight, NCSI highlighted the systematic approach used by the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) to build the capacity of local education agencies (LEAs) to use data effectively and the associated rise in the 2016–17 school year (SY) graduation rates of students with disabilities. One year later, the graph below shows that Florida continues to experience significant gains in the percentage of students with disabilities receiving a traditional diploma.

In the 2017–18 SY, graduation rates were at an all-time high of 77%, significantly higher than Florida’s state-identified measurable result (SIMR) goal of 62.3%. More remarkable is that the gap between students with disabilities and all students decreased to 9.1% from 23.3% in the 2012–13 SY. Furthermore, as shown in the graph on the following page, the graduation gap between Black and White students with disabilities decreased from 13.2 percentage points in the 2012–13 SY to 6.3 percentage points in the 2017–2018 SY. Efforts to improve local data use were critical given that the 2017–18 graduating cohort was the first cohort not to have the option of a special diploma.

This updated spotlight highlights how Florida is successfully sustaining local data use capacity and continuing to improve graduation outcomes.