UF Researcher: Education Trends Highlight New Statewide Statistics

April 5, 2000

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Florida’s high school dropout rates have declined while overall public school enrollment has grown, according to the latest statistics available in a new set of University of Florida publications.

At the same time, the share of students in the state qualifying for the free- and reduced-lunch program remained unchanged at 43 percent, said Susan Floyd, coordinator of information and publications for UF’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research.

“Education is a hot button issue right at the moment with school vouchers, school grading and the governor’s One Florida initiative in the media,” Floyd said. “We used to hear so much about crime with the high crime rates, but now attention has shifted to education.”

The statistics are compiled in three new bureau publications: the Florida Statistical Abstract 1999, Florida County Rankings 1999 and Florida County Perspectives 1999. The volumes have information that includes population projections, property taxes, immigration information and other socioeconomic facts.

Newly compiled education statistics show that statewide dropout rates have declined from 5.6 percent to 4.8 percent in the four-year period between the 1993-94 and 1997-98 school years, with St. Johns County experiencing the largest dip, she said.

Meanwhile, overall enrollment in Florida’s public schools has grown by 9 percent during this same period, with the greatest increases in ninth grade (17 percent) and pre-kindergarten (16 percent), Floyd said.

“Today, those students are first graders and (high school) juniors,” she said. “We can expect a slight bumper crop to graduate next year.”

As of fall 1998, minorities comprise 45 percent of the nearly 2.3 million students enrolled in Florida’s public elementary and secondary schools, with 25 percent of them black and 17 percent Hispanic, she said.

Gadsden County had the highest proportion of minority students (86 percent black and 7 percent Hispanic), while Holmes County had the lowest (3 percent black and less than 1 percent Hispanic), Floyd said.

Gadsden also had the highest rate of students qualifying for participation in the free- and reduced-lunch program (83 percent) for the 1997-98 school year. Clay County had the lowest with only 23 percent of its students eligible.

During the 1998-99 school year, Gadsden recorded the lowest scores on the High School Competency Test, with 54 percent of 10th-graders passing the communication portion and 48 percent passing the mathematics section of the test. Citrus County scored highest, with 91 percent for communications and 90 percent for mathematics. The statewide average was 81 percent for communications and 77 percent for mathematics.

Also, statewide, the average student-teacher ratio in public elementary schools in 1997-98 was 23-to-1 and for secondary schools 20-to-1. In 1998-99, Florida teacher salaries averaged $35,915.

But the books go far beyond education statistics. Need to know what Florida’s population is expected to be in 2010? Or how one county’s property taxes compare to another? For a wide variety of questions about the state, one of the three new publications may have the answers, Floyd said.

New tables in the 1999 edition of the Florida Statistical Abstract include Cuban and Haitian refugees entering the state, nursing home data, reports of elder abuse and live births by education level of the mother and births to teenage mothers by county.

Carol McLarty, coordinator of information and publications for the bureau, said she gets calls every day asking for information that can be found in the Florida Statistical Abstract. County planners, businesses hoping to expand and mothers helping children with their homework are some of those looking for Florida facts, she said.

“I think most people come to associate us with population figures, personal income and employment data,” she said. “The abstract is probably one of the best single source volumes for that kind of information.”

Any offbeat questions? “What’s the largest sea turtle ever caught,” she said. “That’s when we’ll say, Hmm, let me refer you to the Department of Natural Resources.’”