Rare Low Mark at K-8 Center Leaves More Questions Than Answers 

In this undated file image, the entrance to the Key Biscayne K-8 center school is seen (Miami Dade Public Schools via Key News)

A single fail at KBCS stood out in this week’s raft of Florida state assessment scores. 

Although it’s still an “A” school, just 47% of sixth-grade English Language Arts at the Key Biscayne K-8 Center earned passing marks in a state testing scorecard released last week, versus a 58% passing mark for sixth graders countywide. 

The 47% means the class’s average score of 324 on the Florida State Assessment reaches only Level 2 – namely, “below satisfactory; likely to need substantial support for the next grade.” 

County and statewide scores landed in Level 3, “satisfactory,” and increased one percentage point on last year.

The low mark stands out against the school’s usual high standards, with the best score clocking in at 91% for third grade math versus 67% and 62% county and state respectively. 

The result is anomalous considering the higher scores achieved in both fifth and seventh-grade English, which this year achieved 85% and 64% respectively, both of which were higher than state and county scores. The pattern is the same for the previous school year 2017-2018, suggesting 2018-2019 was not a one off. 

So what explains the score? Repeated questions to the school’s principal Silvia Tarafa as well as the district school board went unanswered, with Tarafa simply confirming the numbers are “raw data, and we are an ‘A’ school.” 

Multiple reasons for the low marks were offered in conversations with parents, the PTA, and a member of a Village advisory board. One significant factor is a much smaller class size in sixth grade, meaning results are more easily skewed by individual low scores. 

Class size reductions – this year at a rate of around 59% — are in large part due to students leaving the K-8 Center to attend MAST Academy’s relatively new middle school program, or other magnet schools around the county. 

This year, there were 199 students in fifth grade and only 81 in sixth.

Not all applicants for the MAST program gain admittance, leaving behind a fraction of middle schoolers with a range of abilities, for which KBPS must find the right staffing.

“Staffing the changing class size is very challenging,” said Lili Warner, a member of the Village’s Education Advisory Board and a parent at the school. Students continue to come and go throughout the year too, she said,  in elementary grades as well as middle school. 

Compounding this, around a dozen new students joined sixth grade this past year, mostly from outside the U.S.,  according to Warner, who noted this “diversity is great.”

But new students must learn the testing system, even as they improve their English skills. 

“We have a high number of non-English speakers in our community,” said PTA president Patricia Agostini. 

The school’s report indicated 76% of students are identified as “Hispanic/Latino”, an unclear category which likely includes those whose mother tongues are Spanish, Portuguese, or even both. 

According to Agostini, scores improve in seventh and eighth grades because students have had time to learn the system as well as improve their language skills.

For one family, however, a good grade in English Language Arts –which covers both linguistic and literary skills–  was not enough. 

Andreina Monserratte’s daughter just finished an academically successful sixth grade at the school, but although the family is satisfied with both her grades and with her English teacher, they’ll  be trying a different school for their daughter in the fall. 

“It was not an easy decision – Key Biscayne will always be our home – but I was not satisfied in many ways with the middle school and how it is treated,” said Monserratte. 

“This was a very hard adjustment year,” she continued, citing changes to schedules and electives and a lack of communication which made some parents feel “a little lost and alone.” 

Monserratte’s daughter was very low on the waitlist for MAST Academy, and while many of her peers moved on to the magnet school for sixth grade, she felt “left behind.”