Florida High Impact Elementary School Award (FHI Award): A New Framework to Recognize and Extend Transformative Gains

The need for the fhi award

Across Florida, exceptional elementary schools are quietly achieving remarkable results — accelerating student growth year after year in the critical early grades. Yet these schools remain hidden in plain sight. Their transformative work goes unrecognized. Their proven strategies remain untapped.

This is a massive missed opportunity for Florida’s education system.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. Only half of Florida’s incoming kindergarteners are school-ready, which means that each year, roughly 25,000 children need to catch up to grade level by third grade. But the current trajectory falls far short: early-grade proficiency is improving by only 2,200 students per year. To set all students up for success, Florida must increase early learning gains tenfold.

Here’s the good news: some schools are already doing it. Data shows that students in a number of Florida schools are making progress seven times faster than the state average—proof that dramatic acceleration is possible. These schools represent the blueprint for the transformation Florida needs. Yet they receive no recognition. Meanwhile, struggling schools are left without clear, replicable strategies to guide their improvement efforts.

The irony is hard to ignore: The very teachers and school leaders who are delivering the outcomes Florida is striving for aren’t being identified, celebrated, or asked to share what’s working.

Why not? Because Florida’s accountability system doesn’t start measuring achievement until grade 3—and growth isn’t measured until grade 4. That leaves the most critical years of student development—kindergarten through grade 2—largely invisible.

The Florida High Impact Elementary School Award (FHI Award) aims to fix this. It provides a fair, objective way to identify schools where students are growing by leaps and bounds—and that’s just the beginning. The FHI Award creates a framework to support all schools in building the capacity to accelerate student growth in the early grades.

The fhi award framework

The Florida High Impact Elementary School Award (FHI Award) is grounded in a simple but powerful idea: recognize student growth.

While schools have little control over how prepared students are when they walk through the door on the first day of kindergarten, what happens over the next six years is largely within a school’s influence. That’s why the FHI Award uses a school’s kindergarten readiness rate as a starting point and measures growth from there.

In this way, each school is competing against itself — not others — to demonstrate meaningful academic growth.The ultimate goal? Supporting all students in becoming proficient in reading, math, and science by the end of elementary school. Reaching that goal will require a sustained journey of continuous improvement.

How the fhi award drives improvement

The FHI Award supports continuous improvement in three key ways:

1. Recognition of what’s working now

Schools already delivering exceptional growth will be identified and celebrated. Their practices can be studied, shared, and scaled.

2. Motivation through clear goals

The award gives schools something concrete to work toward — aligning teams around attainable, data-driven growth targets. Recognition comes in three tiers: Bronze, Silver, and Gold.

3. Fairness and high expectations for every school

Schools will be ranked by their kindergarten readiness rate and grouped into quartiles, ensuring comparisons are made among schools with similar starting points.

For each quartile, award thresholds are established based on prior-year data:

• Top 10% of schools earn the Gold Award

• Top 20% earn Silver

• Top 33% earn Bronze

These thresholds remain fixed over time, allowing more schools to qualify as they build capacity and improve student growth. For example, within five years, the number of Bronze-level schools could double — a clear indicator of systemwide progress.

Framework calculation

The FHI Award is built on a straightforward, growth-focused calculation that tracks student progress from kindergarten readiness to Grade 5 proficiency.

Primary Metric: Growth Within Each Quartile

Each school’s growth score is based on the difference between its kindergarten readiness rate and Grade 5 proficiency rates in:

• Reading

• Math

• Science (weighted at 50%, since it’s only tested in Grade 5)

Formula:(Reading gain + Math gain + 0.5 × Science gain) ÷ 2.5

Bonus Category: Rewarding Advanced Gains

Schools can earn up to a 20% bonus based on:

• Increasing the number of students scoring at Levels 4 and 5

• Reducing the number of students scoring at Level 1

The bonus is distributed using a sliding scale:

• A school with 50% kindergarten readiness would receive an even split between both bonus categories.

• Lower-readiness schools receive more weight for reducing Level 1 students.

• Higher-readiness schools are expected to focus on increasing Level 4 and 5 performance.

School A (First Kindergarten Readiness Quartile)

• Kindergarten readiness: 15%

• Grade 5 Reading (Level 3+): 45% (30-point gain)

• Grade 5 Math (Level 3+): 40% (25-point gain)

• Grade 5 Science (Level 3+): 35% (20-point gain)

• Calculation: (30 + 25 + 10) ÷ 2.5 = 26-point average gain

• Bonus: Up to 20% for reducing Level 1 and increasing Level 4/5

School B (Fourth Kindergarten Readiness Quartile)

• Kindergarten readiness: 85%

• Grade 5 Reading (Level 3+): 95% (10-point gain)

• Grade 5 Math (Level 3+): 92% (7-point gain)

• Grade 5 Science (Level 3+): 90% (5-point gain)

• Calculation: (10 + 7 + 2.5) ÷ 2.5 = 7.8-point average gain

• Bonus: Up to 20% for reducing Level 1 and increasing Level 4/5

Quartile-Based Comparison Ensures Fairness

By ranking schools based on their kindergarten readiness rate and grouping them into quartiles, the FHI Award ensures that each school’s growth is evaluated in the context of where it begins. Schools serving the most at-risk students aren’t penalized — and schools starting strong are still challenged to push for deeper growth.

Every school has the opportunity to qualify — and every school has a reason to aim higher.

Implementation and timeline

The FHI Award operates on an annual cycle using data from the completed school year. Each summer, the Florida Department of Education would analyze kindergarten readiness rates and Grade 5 FAST assessment results to calculate growth scores for all eligible elementary schools.

Schools require no application process—winners are identified through objective data analysis using existing state assessments. Award announcements would occur each July, allowing schools to celebrate achievements and begin planning for the following year's improvement efforts.

Recognition includes official state designation, certificates for school display, and inclusion in a statewide directory of FHI Award recipients. Award status is held for the academic year, with schools eligible to compete annually for continued recognition.

Learning network and practice sharing

With approximately 760 schools (190 per quartile) expected to earn recognition at the outset — one-third of Florida’s elementary schools—the FHI Award creates a powerful, statewide opportunity to build capacity for student growth at scale.

These three award tiers (Bronze, Silver, and Gold) do more than celebrate success—they unlock a robust system for sharing what works. Here’s how the FHI Award will support learning, collaboration, and continuous improvement across the state:

Digital Learning Hub

Each winning school creates a profile in an online directory, highlighting the key strategies that drove student growth. These profiles include:

• Contact information

• Demographic context

• Specific practices in curriculum, instruction, and school culture

FHI Award Podcast Series

Monthly episodes feature conversations with principals, teachers, and instructional leaders from recognized schools, offering practical insights into how they accelerated student learning in the early grades.

Research Partnership

Florida’s public universities collaborate to:

• Conduct surveys and case studies of FHI Award schools

• Identify common elements of success

• Publish annual research reports that provide evidence-based insights to guide scaling

Sister School Partnerships

Each FHI Award winner is paired with one or two non-winning schools in their region to provide mentorship and support. These partnerships create direct pathways for practice transfer and strengthen capacity systemwide.

Grade-Level Practice Circles

Teachers with the strongest gains in specific grades or subjects join facilitated learning communities. Example: Second-grade math teachers from Gold Award schools meet in regional sessions to share strategies, challenges, and results — forming a subject-specific improvement network.

Learning Visits

Schools still working to qualify for a FHI Award receive funding to send teams to observe and learn firsthand from FHI Award schools. These structured visits include:

• Classroom observations

• Conversations with school leaders

• Collaborative action planning

Regional Excellence Conferences

FHI Award schools host annual learning conferences in each region, offering:

• Workshops

• Panel discussions

• Networking opportunities for educators working to accelerate early-grade growth

Together, these efforts create a comprehensive, statewide learning ecosystem—one where effective practices are continuously identified, refined, and scaled across Florida’s elementary schools.

Integration with existing systems

The FHI Award complements rather than competes with Florida's existing accountability measures. While school grades provide comprehensive assessments across all tested grades and subjects, the FHI Award specifically recognizes excellence in early-grade growth—filling the critical gap in kindergarten through grade 2 recognition.

This early-grade focus aligns perfectly with state improvement initiatives. Schools that excel at supporting dramatic learning gains in the foundational years typically see strong performance in later grades as well, contributing to improved school grades over time. The FHI Award essentially identifies and celebrates the schools that are building the strong foundation necessary for sustained academic success.

By recognizing growth rather than absolute achievement, the FHI Award recognizes the contributions that elementary schools make to student growth. Each school has the opportunity to earn recognition by accelerating student growth.

The Path forward

Florida stands at a crossroads. We can continue operating with a system that overlooks our most effective elementary schools, or we can shine a spotlight on the educators who are already achieving the kind of student growth we urgently need in order to build capacity in every school to better support student growth.

The Florida High Impact Elementary School Award is more than a recognition program. It’s a strategic investment in identifying, celebrating, and scaling the practices that are transforming lives — not in theory, but in classrooms across our state.

The heroes are already here, quietly achieving extraordinary gains, often without fanfare or recognition. The time has come to find them, elevate them, and learn from them.

The future of Florida’s students depends on how quickly we turn today’s hidden success stories into tomorrow’s systemwide solutions.