Florida Releases 2026 School Grades: 77% Earn an A or B

Florida Posts Higher School Grades for 2025-2026

The Florida Department of Education has released its annual school grades for the 2025-2026 school year, reporting that 77% of graded schools earned an A or B, up from 71% a year earlier. The results, published in early July 2026, land just weeks before students across the state return to classrooms for the new academic year, giving families and administrators a fresh benchmark as the summer winds down. The six-point jump in the share of top-rated schools stood out as one of the headline figures in this year's release.

The department reported that the number of schools receiving a D or F fell sharply, dropping from 70 in 2025 to 31 in 2026. That decline in the count of low-performing schools was one of the clearest markers of improvement in this year's release, and state officials pointed to it as evidence of broad gains across the system. Cutting the number of struggling campuses by more than half in a single year suggested that many schools near the bottom of the scale had climbed into higher categories.

The overall distribution showed 51% of schools earning an A, 26% earning a B, 23% earning a C, roughly 1% earning a D, and fewer than 1% receiving an F. According to the department, just seven schools statewide landed at the bottom of the scale with an F grade, a small fraction of the thousands of campuses that received a letter this year. The concentration of schools in the A and B categories defined the overall shape of the results.

Taken together, the figures describe a system in which the large majority of schools cleared the state's higher performance thresholds. The timing of the release, ahead of the back-to-school stretch, gives families and district leaders a current snapshot as they prepare for the fall, and it sets the tone for conversations about school quality that carry into enrollment, staffing, and neighborhood reputation across the state.

How Florida's Accountability System Works

Florida assigns each public school a single letter grade meant to summarize its performance across several categories. The grades are based on a mix of student achievement, learning gains, graduation rates, acceleration measures, and other indicators that vary depending on the grade levels a school serves. That structure is designed to reward both strong results and meaningful progress, so that a school moving students forward can earn credit even when its starting point is low.

Elementary and middle schools are weighted heavily toward achievement and learning gains on statewide assessments, while high schools also factor in graduation rates and measures of college and career acceleration. The blend is intended to capture both how students perform at a single point in time and how much progress they make over the course of a year, giving a fuller picture than test scores alone would provide.

Because the system rolls multiple measures into one letter, a school's grade reflects more than raw test performance. Learning gains, in particular, are meant to give credit to schools that move students forward, including those serving populations that begin the year further behind. That design aims to ensure the grades reward growth and not simply the demographics of a school's enrollment.

The department calculates the grades each summer and publishes them as a public accountability tool. The letter grades are widely used by parents, real estate markets, and district leaders, giving them influence well beyond the walls of any single campus. For many families, a school's grade is a first reference point when weighing where to enroll a child or where to live, tying the accountability system directly to everyday decisions.

What an A or an F Means for a School

A high grade carries practical weight for a school and the community around it. Strong marks can bolster enrollment, shape neighborhood reputations, and factor into decisions families make about where to live, since school quality is often closely tied to housing choices across Florida. A campus that earns an A can become a selling point for an entire area, reinforcing the link between schools and the communities they anchor.

At the other end of the scale, a D or F grade can trigger additional state scrutiny and support requirements. Schools that persistently struggle under the accountability system can face intervention measures intended to accelerate improvement, and sustained low performance can carry more serious consequences over time. The grade functions as both a diagnosis and a signal, flagging campuses where the state and district may need to concentrate resources.

For the seven schools that received an F this year, the grade signals an urgent need for support and a clear target for turnaround efforts. State and district resources are typically directed toward those campuses, with the goal of lifting outcomes before the label hardens into a longer-term pattern. The small number of F schools means those efforts can be tightly focused on a handful of communities.

The stakes attached to the grades are part of why the annual release draws such close attention. A letter that shifts up or down can influence staffing, funding conversations, and the confidence families place in their local schools. Because the grade condenses a year of work into a single symbol, its release each summer becomes a moment of reckoning and, for many schools, celebration.

A Broad Improvement Across the State

The jump from 71% to 77% of schools earning an A or B represents a meaningful year-over-year gain within the accountability framework. Combined with the drop in D and F schools, the numbers point to improvement that reached across much of the state rather than being concentrated in a few districts, suggesting a widespread lift rather than an isolated set of success stories.

The reduction in low-performing schools from 70 to 31 was especially notable because it cut the count of struggling campuses by more than half. That kind of movement suggests that many schools previously sitting near the bottom of the scale climbed into higher categories over the course of the year, a shift that carries real consequences for the students and staff at those campuses.

State education officials framed the results as a reflection of continued focus on achievement and learning gains. According to the department, the improvements build on prior years and demonstrate that the system's emphasis on measurable outcomes is producing progress. Officials cast the gains as the product of sustained work by teachers and students rather than a one-time statistical swing.

While the headline figures were positive, the presence of C-rated schools at 23% shows that a substantial share of campuses still sit in the middle of the scale. Those schools represent both the bulk of everyday instruction for many students and the clearest opportunity for future gains, making them a natural focus for districts aiming to push more campuses into the A and B ranges next year.

Reaction From State Education Officials

State education leaders welcomed the results and characterized them as validation of Florida's accountability model. The department said the grades reflect the work of educators and students across the state and reinforce the value of measuring schools against clear standards. In their telling, the year's gains show that a system built around achievement and progress can move the needle across thousands of campuses at once.

Officials tied the gains to the broader design of the system, arguing that transparent grading pushes schools to prioritize achievement and progress. In their framing, the year-over-year improvement is a sign that the model continues to drive results even as the state has adjusted its assessments in recent years. They presented the grades as proof that the accountability structure remains effective through those transitions.

The department also emphasized the drop in the number of D and F schools as a central takeaway, presenting it as evidence that struggling campuses can and do improve within the system. According to the release, the shrinking count of low-performing schools was among the most encouraging findings, and officials highlighted it as a marker of the system's capacity to lift schools that had been falling behind.

As with every annual release, the state cast the grades as a starting point for the coming year rather than a final verdict. Officials said the results would inform where support is directed as districts head into the fall, framing the data as a tool for guiding resources rather than simply a scorecard to be filed away once the headlines fade.

How the Results Landed in Large Districts

Results were reported across Florida's large districts, including those in the Tampa Bay region, where school performance draws close local attention. District-level outcomes varied, and individual systems highlighted their own mixes of A, B, and C schools as the state data became available. Large districts, with hundreds of campuses each, tend to show a spread of grades that reflects the diversity of the communities they serve.

Large urban and suburban districts serve varied student populations, which can produce a wide range of grades within a single system. The statewide improvement suggests that many of those districts saw more schools reach the higher end of the scale this year, though the specifics differed from place to place and each system framed its results in its own terms. The broad gains reflected in the statewide totals necessarily included progress in many of these populous systems.

For families in major metropolitan areas, the grades offer a way to compare neighborhood schools and track how campuses are trending over time. District leaders often use the release to spotlight successes and to signal where they intend to concentrate resources in the year ahead, using the letters as both a public accounting and a planning tool for the fall.

Because district results feed into the statewide totals, the broad gains reflected in the 77% figure include improvement across many of Florida's most populous systems. The overall picture points to progress that extended into the large districts serving the bulk of the state's students, reinforcing the sense that this year's gains were widely shared rather than confined to smaller or higher-resourced communities.

What's Next for Florida Schools

With the 2025-2026 grades finalized, attention turns to sustaining the gains as students head back to class. The improved figures set a benchmark that districts will aim to hold or build on when the next round of assessments and grades is calculated in 2027, and the momentum from this year's results will shape expectations heading into the fall.

Schools that earned lower grades this year will be the focus of support and intervention efforts, particularly the seven campuses that received an F. State and district resources are expected to concentrate on those schools with the aim of moving them up the scale before the pattern deepens, and the small number of F schools allows those efforts to be closely targeted on the communities that need them most.

For higher-performing schools, the challenge shifts to maintaining strong results amid the ordinary turnover of students and staff that every campus experiences. Sustaining an A or B from one year to the next requires continued focus on the achievement and learning-gain measures that anchor the system, a task that grows harder as expectations rise alongside the results.

As the new school year begins, the grades stand as both a report card on the past year and a marker for the one ahead. The department's next release will show whether the 2026 improvements represent a lasting shift or a single strong year within Florida's accountability system, and districts across the state will spend the coming months working to ensure the gains hold.