North/central Area Alternative Learning Center, Merritt Island FL

Original Research by School Decision on North/central Area Alternative Learning Center

The North/Central Area Alternative Learning Center sits on Merritt Island, Florida, as part of the Brevard County public school system. It serves grades three through twelve and is classified as an alternative school, which shapes nearly everything a parent needs to understand about it before drawing any conclusions from its data.

Alternative schools in Florida typically serve students who need a different academic setting than a conventional campus, whether because of disciplinary referrals, credit recovery needs, attendance challenges, or other circumstances. That context matters enormously when reading this school's numbers. The enrollment is small, concentrated heavily in the middle and high school grades, with only a handful of students in the elementary grades. A large share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The student body is roughly evenly divided between white and Black students, with smaller shares identifying as Hispanic or multiracial.

State assessment results are available for some grades and suppressed in others, likely because the grade-level groups are too small to report without risking identification of individual students. Where results are reported, in grades five through eight in math, grades seven and eight in ELA, and grade eight in science, proficiency rates are very low. A parent reading those figures should understand that they reflect a population that has, in many cases, already experienced significant academic disruption before arriving here. Treating those results as a direct comparison to a conventional school would misread what they describe. That said, a parent whose child is currently enrolled or considering enrollment would reasonably want to ask the school directly about its progress metrics, credit recovery outcomes, and what academic supports are in place, since the state proficiency data alone does not tell that story.

A graduation rate is not available in the data provided. For an alternative school serving students who are often working toward credits they need to complete a diploma, that outcome measure matters, and a parent would want to ask the school about its completion and credential rates directly.

No program information, course access data, staffing ratios, attendance figures, or discipline data were available in the payload. Civil rights data was also absent. Those gaps are not unusual for a small alternative setting, but they leave real questions unanswered about what day-to-day support looks like.

On the housing side, Merritt Island's home values are modestly above both state and national medians, and have dipped slightly year over year. Rents have nudged upward over the same period. Affordability is not dramatically out of line with the broader national picture, though monthly ownership costs are meaningful at current mortgage rates. No web research was available for Merritt Island's character, employers, or civic anchors, so that layer of community context was left out rather than guessed at.

District-level context for Brevard is thin; a search for parent-relevant district changes returned no confirmable results before the research budget was exhausted, so that section was left blank rather than filled with speculation.

The comparison framework relative to districts in Brevard County flagged the proficiency index as not applicable because there was only one comparable entity in the comparison set, and graduation and absenteeism comparisons were unavailable for similar reasons. So no peer positioning is possible here.

What a parent or caregiver is really asking about this school is whether it can serve a student who needs something a conventional school has not provided. The data available cannot answer that fully. The proficiency numbers are low, but that is typical of alternative placements nationally and does not tell you whether students are making progress from where they started. Anyone considering this school would benefit from a direct conversation with staff about how progress is tracked, what the path to a diploma looks like, and what supports are available for students with disabilities or other learning needs, since those data points were not available here.

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Academic performance

State test results and graduation outcomes.

Graduation rate (ACGR)

Not publicly reportedCohort of 1 student · Class of 2021

The federal source does not publish a graduation rate for cohorts this small. The cohort size is shown for context.

How this school compares to all schools in this state

Each dot is one school’s SY 2020-21 graduation rate, binned by integer rate. Taller columns mean more schools at that rate. This school is highlighted.

867 schools plotted. 183 additional schools' rates are federally suppressed and not shown. Data: EDFacts SY 2020-21.

Math

Grade 510%

School 10% · District 57% · ▼ 47 pts below district

▼ 45 pts below state median · ▼ 45 pts below county median

Grade 713%

School 13% · District 64% · ▼ 51 pts below district

▼ 36 pts below state median · ▼ 52 pts below county median

Grade 810%

School 10% · District 41% · ▼ 31 pts below district

▼ 41 pts below state median · ▼ 30 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 729%

School 29% · District 62% · ▼ 33 pts below district

▼ 26 pts below state median · ▼ 33 pts below county median

Grade 88%

School 8% · District 59% · ▼ 51 pts below district

▼ 46 pts below state median · ▼ 53 pts below county median

Science

Grade 89%

School 9% · District 53% · ▼ 44 pts below district

▼ 37 pts below state median · ▼ 44 pts below county median

This schoolBREVARD, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 7Lower-income24%Higher-income36%13 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income7%Higher-income9%2 pp gap