The results are in: 99.7 percent of Pinellas teachers and 99.3 percent of Hillsborough teachers last year were rated either outstanding or satisfactory, according to district data requested by the Gradebook. We asked more than a month ago, prompted by this highly praised report from The New Teacher Project, but for some reason it took a while for the numbers to trickle out.

The TNTP found the overwhelming majority of teachers in the 12 districts it studied were rated either outstanding or satisfactory. Which is a big problem, TNTP says, not only because it's at odds with how teachers themselves would rate their peers, but because it means bad teachers aren’t getting booted, average teachers aren’t getting the professional development they need to get better and outstanding teachers aren’t being modeled so others can learn from them.

Keep reading to see a more specific breakdown for Pinellas and Hillsborough. (The Pinellas figures show all instructional personnel. The Hillsborough figures are just for classroom teachers.)

Pinellas: Of 8,133 instructional staff, 4,641 were rated Level 4 (57.1 percent), 2,336 were Level 3 (28.7 percent), 998 were Level 2 (12.3 percent), 133 were Level 1 (1.6 percent) and 25 were below Level 1 (0.3 percent). Pinellas considers Levels 3 and 4 to be outstanding and Levels 1 and 2 to be satisfactory. Below Level 1 is unsatisfactory.

Hillsborough: Of 12,887 classroom teachers, 6,709 were rated Outstanding (52.1 percent), 6,088 were rated Satisfactory (47.2 percent), 62 were rated Needs Improvement (0.5 percent) and 28 were rated Unsatisfactory (0.2 percent).

- Ron Matus, state education reporter