Late last week, the ACLU joined with some Palm Beach parents to sue the Florida Department of Education and several other state government leaders over the Palm Beach school district's poor graduation rates.

The claim: The district graduated too few students, and its achievement gap was too broad.

It's not like the state hasn't been trying to fix that, FLDOE spokesman Tom Butler told the Gradebook.

"Improving the state’s graduation rate is a major focus of the Department and we are pleased that some success has occurred in this area over the last several years," Butler said in an e-mail. "However, we still have much more work to do, which is why we have implemented new initiatives such as our Differentiated Accountability program and the newly adopted changes to our high school accountability system. Initiatives like these will allow us to build on our successes and ensure that our graduation rate continues to rise."