The top reported proficiency rate is 47% in Math. The lowest is 40% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Castle Hill Elementary School
Castle Hill Elementary sits on NW 46th Avenue in Lauderhill, a built-out, densely residential city in Broward County. It serves children from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, and enrollment places it in a range typical for a neighborhood elementary school of this grade band in suburban South Florida. The school is a regular public school within the Broward district, with no charter or magnet designation.
The student body is overwhelmingly Black, with a small Hispanic population and negligible representation of other groups. A substantial majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which tells you something concrete about the economic baseline of the families the school serves. Data on English learner rates and students with IEPs were not available in what we reviewed, so a parent with specific questions about language services or special education supports should ask the school directly.
On state assessments, Castle Hill's results land below where most families would want to see them, and that deserves a straight account. Florida's FAST assessments are given in grades three through five. In reading and language arts, proficiency rates across tested grades range from the low thirties to the mid-forties, meaning most students at each grade are not yet scoring at the proficient level. Math results show a similar pattern, with the fourth-grade cohort noticeably stronger than third or fifth grade, though still with a majority below proficiency. Fifth-grade science, measured by the Florida Statewide Science Assessment, comes in near the mid-forties. Trend data across years was not available, so whether scores have been moving in any direction is something a parent may want to ask the school about specifically. A comparison of this school's proficiency relative to other schools in Broward County was not possible from the data at hand, because the comparison framework requires multiple districts and Broward is a single-district county. That means positioning Castle Hill against neighboring schools requires looking directly at the Broward district's own school-level data.
Because Castle Hill ends at fifth grade, there is no graduation rate to report, and none of the high school academic pathway measures apply here. No information on specific programs, enrichment offerings, staffing ratios, attendance patterns, or discipline data was part of what we reviewed, so those aspects of the school's environment remain a gap worth exploring with the school or the Broward district website.
The surrounding community shapes the practical context for families. Lauderhill is a car-dependent city; most residents drive, and while transit options are better than average for the region, with Broward County Transit bus routes and a transit center that opened in recent years, the city carries a low walkability score. The neighborhood texture is largely single-family homes, older condo communities, and strip plazas along corridors like Oakland Park Boulevard and State Road 7. The city has a pronounced Caribbean cultural presence and a notably multicultural population, with dozens of languages spoken.
Home prices in the zip code surrounding Castle Hill have moved downward year over year by a meaningful margin, placing them well below both the state and national medians for home values. Rents, by contrast, have edged upward, and the rent-to-income ratio signals a real affordability strain for renters in the area. For families considering buying, the local price point is among the more accessible in Broward County, though affordability remains constrained relative to incomes at the national level.
Lauderhill as a whole is in a redevelopment phase rather than a growth phase. The long-dormant Lauderhill Mall is the subject of a major mixed-use apartment and retail proposal, and the city is building out an arts and entertainment corridor along NW 38th Avenue through its community redevelopment districts. These are not changes that affect a family's elementary school experience directly, but they reflect a city that is investing in its own center rather than declining.
For a family whose child is already enrolled or who lives in the Castle Hill attendance zone, the academic proficiency picture is the clearest prompt to ask questions: what interventions are in place, how does the school track individual student progress, and what resources are available for children reading below grade level. The data we have does not tell the full story of what happens inside the school, and those conversations with teachers and administrators would be the logical next step.
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