The top reported proficiency rate is 61% in Science. The lowest is 57% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Bradford Elementary School
Bradford Elementary sits on the southeastern edge of Starke, the county seat of Bradford County in northeast Florida, serving children from pre-kindergarten through sixth grade. It is a regular public school drawing from a community whose economy runs on corrections employment, agriculture, CSX rail, healthcare, and retail, with Florida State Prison and Union Correctional Institution among the area's largest employers. Starke has a historic downtown along Call Street, a highway-corridor commercial strip, and a mostly working-class, rural-small-city texture. Home values here run well below both the state and national midpoints, with the local market showing modest recent appreciation, which makes the area meaningfully more affordable than most of Florida for families considering a move.
The school serves a fairly substantial enrollment for an elementary covering pre-K through sixth grade. A large majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which places this in higher-need territory by Florida standards. The student body is majority white, with a sizable Black student population and smaller Hispanic and multiracial groups. IEP rates and English learner rates were not available in the data we reviewed.
On Florida's FAST assessments in the most recent school year, the academic picture is mixed and worth reading carefully by grade level. In ELA, third and fifth graders scored in the low-to-mid range for proficiency, fourth grade came in lower, and sixth grade was notably stronger. Math showed a different arc: third grade was the weakest point, fourth grade sat just below the midpoint, and both fifth and sixth grade posted results that were considerably stronger, with sixth grade in particular showing solid performance. Fifth-grade science proficiency landed in the low sixties, a middling result. The pattern across subjects is that upper-elementary grades, especially sixth, tend to outperform the younger grades, which is not uncommon in schools where cumulative instruction builds over time, but the lower third- and fourth-grade proficiency rates, particularly in math, are something a parent of an entering student would want to ask the school about directly.
Trend data across prior years was not available in what we reviewed, so it is hard to say whether these results represent improvement, stability, or decline from earlier years. The district as a whole, publicly reported, showed notable year-over-year gains on the 2024-25 state assessment, with Grade 6 math among the grades cited as climbing. That broader momentum is worth knowing, though it does not replace school-level trend data that we simply do not have here.
At the district level, Bradford schools have publicly adopted a data-driven instruction model using Renaissance Star assessments in reading, math, and early literacy from kindergarten through twelfth grade, paired with digital reading access for students and families. Parents receive progress monitoring reports from this system. Whether that model is working is partly answered by the sixth-grade results at Bradford Elementary, which are among the stronger numbers in the building, and by the district-wide reported gains, though some middle-grade ELA scores remain softer.
Program-specific details for Bradford Elementary were not available in the data. Information on after-school programs, enrichment, or specific instructional approaches beyond the district-wide Renaissance model was not provided, so families would want to contact the school directly on those points.
For a family evaluating fit: this is a neighborhood public elementary in a small, rural county seat with below-average home prices, a high share of economically disadvantaged students, and a student body that reflects the demographic mix of Starke. Academic results are uneven across grades, with real strengths in the upper grades and softer performance in the early elementary years, particularly third and fourth grade math. The district is moving in a positive direction by publicly reported accounts, and the data-driven instructional model gives families a structured way to track their child's progress. A parent with a child entering third or fourth grade would reasonably want to understand what targeted support looks like if a student comes in below grade level.
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