How we estimate percentiles: Florida high school

A clear explanation of the data and the method, so you can judge how much weight to give the numbers.

What the data is

Every number here comes from official Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) results for 2022 to 2026:

Grade 9 ELA, Grade 10 ELA, Biology 1 and U.S. History: the FLDOE school report cards, which give the real number of students in each of the five achievement levels for every school, district and the state. The average score is estimated: it is the center of the bell curve that best matches the share of students below each level’s cut score.
Algebra 1 and Geometry: FLDOE’s per-test results files for each school and district, which give the number tested, the percentage in each level and the average scale score. We turn the percentages into student counts that print back exactly as FLDOE printed them, and center the curve on FLDOE’s own average.

Florida’s school districts are its counties, so there is no separate county comparison.

Who is counted

Grade 9 ELA and Grade 10 ELA count the students enrolled in that grade who took the state ELA test, as Florida’s school report cards report them. Algebra 1 and Geometry count the students who took the end-of-course exam in the spring for the first time, in any grade: middle-school students who take the course early are included and counted at their middle school (they are 41 to 49% of spring Algebra 1 testers and 10 to 12% of Geometry testers), and retakes are not included. Biology 1 counts students in grades 9 to 12 who took the end-of-course exam (not middle-school students); where a school’s report card hides more than a tenth of those students, the school is left out. U.S. History counts 11th graders who took the end-of-course exam.

Important: the public data does not contain individual student scores, only these group summaries. So no tool can compute a true rank of one student against every other student. What we provide is a well-grounded estimate.

How the percentile is estimated

Florida publishes the exact scale-score range for each achievement level (e.g. for Algebra 1 from 2024, Level 3 is 400-417). Given a score, we:

identify which achievement level the score falls in;
count everyone in the lower levels as scoring below;
within the score's own level, spread that level's students along the group's fitted curve (below) rather than evenly across the level's range. Students bunch up toward the middle of the scale, so an even spread would put too many of them out at the far ends of the lowest and highest levels.

That gives the percentile: the estimated share of students in the group who scored at or below the entered score.

About the smooth curve

The bell-like curve on each chart is a truncated-normal distribution fitted so that its area within each achievement level matches the level counts, centered on that average score. It's there to visualize the shape of the group's scores. The level counts set the headline percentile (steps above); the curve only decides where inside the student's own level the line falls.

When a group's students all sit in one or two levels, the counts can't say how spread out their scores are, and the fitted curve can come out far too narrow. Those curves are drawn no narrower than one fifth of the statewide spread, which is about the size of the test's own measurement error, and inside the student's level the percentile spreads that level's students evenly instead.

Why estimates are still useful: the achievement-level counts are real for each group, and for Algebra 1 and Geometry so is the average score. The only assumption anywhere in this pipeline is how scores are distributed inside a level, a small and bounded range. Across a whole school, district, or the state, that assumption averages out well, so the comparison ("above/below average here vs. statewide") is reliable even though the exact percentile is approximate.

Cut scores

All tables come from Florida’s State Board rule on achievement levels (Rule 6A-1.09422), in the version in force for each year. Level 3 and above is passing.

Grade 9 and 10 ELA, Algebra 1 and Geometry use the B.E.S.T. scales from 2024 to 2026 (levels: Well Below Grade Level, Below Grade Level, On Grade Level, Proficient, Exemplary) and the older FSA scales in 2022 and 2023 (levels: Inadequate, Below Satisfactory, Satisfactory, Proficient, Mastery). 2023 was the first year of the new tests, and Florida reported it on these older scales; we show 2023 the way it was reported. Biology 1 and U.S. History keep one scale in every year. The score range for each level, by year, is on the score guides.

Scale scores from different scales don’t line up; percentiles do, because each year is compared to its own students.

Limitations to keep in mind

Percentiles are estimates, not official rankings. Treat a "62nd percentile" as "roughly the top 40%," not an exact standing.
Small schools have small counts, so their estimates are noisier. Florida hides results for very small groups.
2018, 2019 and 2021 are not included yet: those years’ school files are only available from a web archive.
The report cards count a few percent fewer grade 9 and 10 ELA students than FLDOE’s statewide results; we use the report cards’ counts as published.

This site stores nothing you type. Scores are used only in your browser to draw your charts.

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