The top reported proficiency rate is 66% in Math. The lowest is 54% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Tropical Elementary School
Tropical Elementary sits on the southwest side of Plantation, a planned suburban city in the heart of Broward County. The school serves prekindergarten through fifth grade as a regular public elementary within the Broward district.
The student body is meaningfully diverse. Hispanic students make up the largest share, followed by white students, Black students, and smaller Asian and multiracial populations. A substantial portion of families qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, though that share falls below half, pointing to a mixed economic picture. Data on English learner enrollment and students with IEPs was not available in what we reviewed.
On Florida's FAST assessments, the school's results vary by grade and subject. Fifth-grade math proficiency is the clearest strength, with a clear majority of students scoring proficient. Third-grade math and third- and fourth-grade ELA cluster in a similar range, with most but not all students meeting the bar. Fourth-grade math comes in somewhat lower. Fifth-grade ELA holds steady near the third-grade ELA level, while fifth-grade science, measured by the Florida Statewide Science Assessment, falls just above half proficient. These are solid-to-middling results in context, not a school where test scores jump out as a headline strength or a clear concern. A parent wanting to understand how a specific grade performs, or how subgroups within the school are doing, would benefit from asking the school directly, since the available data covers only all-students figures at the grade level. Multi-year trend data was not available, so direction of travel is not something we can characterize.
Because there is only one district in Broward County for comparison purposes, the neighbor comparison set was too small to place Tropical meaningfully against peers. Graduation rate does not apply here, as the school ends at fifth grade. Chronic absenteeism data was not provided.
Program information was not included in the data we reviewed. We looked for district-level changes through Broward's public communications and found nothing confirmable within our research window, so that context was left out rather than guessed.
The neighborhood around the school reflects Plantation's broader character. The city grew from a 1930s master plan that kept zoning organized and insisted on architectural variety between adjacent homes. The result, publicly reported, is a range from traditional large-lot Old Florida neighborhoods where horses are not unusual to newer mixed-use apartment developments in Midtown. Plantation is largely car-dependent by any measure, though many residential streets have the width and canopy that make walking and biking feel reasonable. The city lacks a traditional downtown but is actively building one in its Midtown district, with the redevelopment of the former Fashion Mall site into a mixed-use live-work-play destination drawing considerable attention.
The housing market in the zip code where Tropical sits is expensive relative to the state average and well above the national midpoint. Home values have edged down slightly year over year, while rents have ticked up. The estimated monthly cost of ownership at current mortgage rates is substantial, and the rent-to-income ratio, measured against national median income, is well above what most affordability guides consider comfortable. Families weighing this attendance zone should factor housing costs into the picture carefully.
Plantation's employer base is anchored in healthcare, technology, and corporate services, with names like Motorola Solutions, Aetna, Magic Leap, DHL, and several major medical institutions publicly cited. That economic base gives the city a somewhat professional character that shapes both who lives here and the kind of community context that surrounds the school.
For a family with elementary-age children, Tropical offers a diverse, suburban public school with test results that are generally around or above the state midpoint depending on the grade, set in a community that is growing and changing. The missing pieces, chiefly subgroup performance, program details, absenteeism, and multi-year trends, are worth pursuing directly with the school before drawing firm conclusions.
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