TAMPA, Fla. — During a press conference to sign several controversial new education measures into law earlier this month, Florida’s top politicians and education leaders all used the moment to praise the state’s latest distinction.
“When you’re ranked No. 1 by US News & World Report like we were,” said a giddy Governor Ron DeSantis on stage.
“We’re #1in education overall,” echoed Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Renner.
“Florida is No. 1 in education according to US News & World report,” Florida Education Commissioner and former FL Senator Manny Diaz told the cheering crowd of supporters during the press conference in Miami Dade.
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For the 7th year in a row, US News & World Report dubbed the sunshine state No. 1 overall in education and No. 1 for higher education.
“Hey guys, how about that, seven years in a row,” said Brian Lamb, Chairman of Florida’s Board of Governors, during a Zoom meeting with fellow members the following day. The Board of Governors serves as the oversight board for the state’s public university system.
“It’s a testament to our trajectory and the work that we’re doing. It’s working,” he said.
But a closer look at the details behind these rankings had us wondering what it all really means. Is Florida’s No. 1 education title really an indication that students are getting the best of it here?
“You got a positive Yelp review. That’s, in essence, what you just got,” explained Akil Bello, Director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing. The group advocates against the misuse of standardized testing.
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But for years, Bello has also been a vocal critic of the US News & World Report ranking systems. On Twitter last year, he called the rankings “terrible and wrong.”
“They are using subjective analysis, filtering it through numbers and pretending it’s objective,” he explained. “That conveys to parents to families to shoppers, essentially, false information. They’re using metrics that no one would actually want to measure if you were looking at education,” he said.
According to its website, US News’ education rankings are measured using a limited number of metrics that include graduation rates, cost of tuition, debt at graduation, and the number of citizens in each state who hold a college degree.
“Are you going to choose a college based on the number of people with associate degrees or better that live in the community around it? What does that have to do with the college itself,” asked Bello, who also said graduation rates are more reflective of money than any academic excellence achieved by a student.
“Most of the people who end up not graduating are because they didn’t have the funding to continue. So unless you disaggregate those who academically didn’t graduate from those who financially couldn’t graduate, you’re not actually saying anything,” he said.
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“The US News & World Report rankings are pretty narrowly focused,” Andrew Spar, head of Florida’s largest teachers’ union, agreed. But Spar isn’t writing off the rankings, which also deemed Florida’s pre-k through 12 education system No. 14 nationally.
While that measurement was also limited to metrics like graduation rates, it also included test scores from some 8th-grade exams along with results from college readiness exams, including the SAT and ACT.
“I wouldn’t say I don’t take it seriously. I take it for what it is,” Spar explained when asked about criticisms about the rankings.
In a press release shortly after the rankings were made public, Florida’s Department of Education described its methodology as measuring “the overall quality of each state’s education system.”
“The Florida education model stands alone as a shining example for all other states to follow,” added Commissioner Diaz.
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But if these rankings speak to the quality of education students get in Florida, Bello advises you may want to look somewhere else.
“Basically, somebody just called Florida pretty,” he said, “One of the problems with politicians endorsing these rankings is that they’re misleading the public. They’re suggesting that these rankings are providing real information about the quality of education when in truth they’re not,” he said.
In response to questions about its methodology and metrics, a spokesperson from US News & World Report sent us the following statement:
Florida, the No. 1 state overall in the education category, ranks in the top half of states on eight of 10 education metrics. It is also No. 1 in higher education, particularly excelling in the tuition and fees metric and in metrics assessing college graduation rates. The state excels in the tuition and fees metric of the higher education subcategory and in metrics assessing college graduation rates, but ranks in the top 10 for only one pre-K-12 metric: high school graduation rate.
To ensure the Best States rankings are objective and fair, U.S. News designed the initial framework in consultation with a third party. U.S. News also weighted the eight major categories based on results from representative surveys designed to determine which factors Americans believe their home states should prioritize.
Within each category, the initial metrics were selected objectively in collaboration with experts, using specific criteria. Among these considerations were the comprehensiveness, reliability and timeliness of the data reflected by each metric, criteria that continue to inform the project with each release. The project uses publicly available government data when possible and proprietary data in cases where public data was not available.
SpaceX launched 21 Starlink internet satellites from Florida’s Space Coast early Monday morning (Dec. 23) and landed the returning rocket on a ship at sea.
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Starlink spacecraft — 13 of which can beam service directly to cellphones — lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida today at 12:35 a.m. EDT (0535 GMT).
The Falcon 9’s first stage came back to Earth as planned, touching down in the Atlantic Ocean about eight minutes after launch on the SpaceX droneship “Just Read the Instructions.”
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The first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rests on the deck of a droneship after launching 21 Starlink internet satellites to orbit from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Dec. 23, 2024. (Image credit: SpaceX)
It was the 15th liftoff and landing for this particular booster, according to a SpaceX mission description. Eight of those flights have been Starlink missions.
The Falcon 9’s upper stage continued hauling the 21 Starlink satellites to low Earth orbit, where they will be deployed about 65 minutes after launch.
Starlink satellite train: how to see and track it in the night sky
Monday morning’s Starlink launch was the 129th Falcon 9 mission of 2024. About two-thirds of those flights have been devoted to building out the Starlink broadband megaconstellation, which current consists of more than 6,800 active satellites.
Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!
Florida State football had an embarrassing 2024 campaign where it finished with a 2-10 record. This is not the expectation of what the Seminoles are all about.
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Head football coach Mike Norvell understood the urgency as he could not allow the program to snowball into a laughing stock after a productive 13-1 season in 2023. Norvell was heading into a pivotal sixth season with his job on the line.
As a result, he went out and hired a ton of new coaches on his staff, including Gus Malzahn, Tim Harris Jr., Herb Hand, Tony White, Terrance Knighton, and Evan Cooper. This was uncharted territory for Norvell since he had never had to fire multiple coaches like that.
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Nonetheless, we were wondering how the Seminoles’ 2025 recruiting class would play out with new coaches as well as the struggling year in 2024.
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The recruiting class did well, and it finished with the 20th-best in the 247Sports Composite rankings (prospects can still sign in February). In this article, I want to highlight three of the most underrated signees from Florida State’s 2025 recruiting class.
The 2024 U.S. Amateur runner-up is transferring to Florida, he announced Saturday. The sophomore at Iowa, whose hometown is Naples, Florida, entered the transfer portal earlier this month, and he made his decision to join coach J.C. Deacon and the 2023 national champions come next fall.
Because of NCAA rules, Kent won’t be eligible to compete for Florida until the 2025-26 season, but he can finish his sophomore year with the Hawkeyes. This fall, he placed in the top 13 all four tournaments, his best finish being a T-5 at the Fighting Irish Classic.
And, of course, he has a tee time at Augusta National Golf Club in the spring.
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Kent will essentially be the fourth member of Florida’s 2025 signing class, which ranked second in the country on signing day. He’ll join a talented roster that includes Parker Bell, Mathew Kress and Jack Turner, though with new NCAA roster limits coming, there’s bound to be some unprecedented roster turnover in college golf before the start of the 2025-26 season.
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