The Florence school district has a new grade on the recently released state report card, going from a 79/C to an 88/B. Alabama’s overall ranking was a 79/C. The change came on the heels of a request by school officials to recalculate since Florence schools took a different assessment than the rest of the state. The state grades, which were released Feb. 1, were based on data from the 2016-17 school year. They relied heavily on results of the ACT Aspire testing series, which Florence hasn’t used since 2014 when the district was granted a waiver from the State Department of Education to use the Scantron Performance Series