Hillsborough leads in grade appeals

The deadline has passed for Florida school districts to appeal school grades to the state.

Just nine districts and the Florida Virtual Academy filed 61 grade challenges, with eight more appealing "adequate yearly progress" ratings or school improvement ratings. And leading the pack was Hillsborough County.

Hillsborough has questioned the grades of 25 schools, and the ratings of nine others, for a total of 34 appeals. Next closest was Manatee, which took issue with the grades of 22 schools. The rest of the districts were in single digits. Hernando filed one. See the breakout here.

Hillsborough spokeswoman Linda Cobbe told the Gradebook that the district did not share Manatee's concerns about mistakes with the scoring of the tests of English-language learners. Rather, she said, district testing experts took a closer look at the schools' grade calculations and, based on state rules, the scores were wrong.

"We felt there were reasons why those schools should have their grades recalculated after we did our own calculations," Cobbe said.

The Department of Education historically has announced the appeals decisions in the winter.