Excelsior Prep Charter School of Miami Gardens, Miami Gardens FL

Original Research by School Decision on Excelsior Prep Charter School of Miami Gardens

Excelsior Prep Charter School of Miami Gardens sits on the northern edge of Miami Gardens, a large suburban city in Miami-Dade County that spans roughly twenty square miles of residential neighborhoods interspersed with commercial corridors and major entertainment venues. The school serves kindergarten through eighth grade and draws from a community that the city itself has described as still working to build a coherent identity, with auto-oriented development that favors driving over walking. That physical context matters for daily logistics: Miami Gardens is publicly reported as minimally walkable, and families typically rely on cars, though the city does run a free circulator bus and Metrobus routes thread through the area.

The school is a charter school operating under Miami-Dade County Public Schools. Its enrollment is small-to-moderate for a K-8 school and is almost entirely Black and Hispanic, with a very large share of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch. Those are plain demographic facts, not judgments; they tell a parent what the peer community looks like and signal that the school serves a population with significant economic need. Data on students with IEPs and English learners was not reported, so a parent interested in those support structures should ask the school directly.

State assessment results from Florida's FAST exams and the Statewide Science Assessment give the clearest academic picture available, though trend data across years was not available in what was provided, so it is hard to say whether scores are rising, falling, or holding. What the current results show is an uneven and generally modest proficiency picture across grades and subjects. In early elementary math, the school reaches roughly half its students at proficiency, which is a reasonable baseline. Fifth-grade math and ELA scores fall noticeably lower. The middle grades tell a mixed story: sixth-grade ELA is the school's strongest single result, and seventh-grade math is the weakest. Science proficiency in both tested grades sits in the low-to-mid twenties range. Taken together, most grades are reaching fewer than half their students at proficiency in most subjects, and several results are meaningfully below that. A parent should ask the school directly what targeted supports are in place and how progress is tracked across the K-8 span, particularly in the transition from upper elementary into middle grades where the dip is most visible.

No graduation rate applies here, as the school does not serve high school grades. A comparison of this school against other schools or districts in Miami-Dade County was not possible with the data available because the comparison set was too small to produce a meaningful index.

On the district side, Miami-Dade County Public Schools has been managing sustained enrollment decline, and publicly reported plans from spring 2026 include closing or consolidating a number of schools across the district. Families considering any Miami-Dade school, including this charter, should be aware that boundary changes and school restructuring are active concerns, and that charter schools, while sometimes more insulated from those reshufflings, still exist within the district's broader policy environment. A voter-approved property tax increase passed in 2022 funds teacher pay and school safety staffing, and that rate is set to expire in 2027 unless renewed, which is worth noting for homeowners weighing costs.

Housing near the school reflects Miami-Dade's broader affordability strain. Home values in the zip code sit well above the Florida statewide median and considerably above the national median, and rents have been climbing. The rent-to-income ratio in this area is high enough that a parent renting rather than owning will feel it. The city is in an active development phase, with a large city center project under construction near Hard Rock Stadium and a significant industrial pipeline adding warehousing and logistics space, so the physical neighborhood is changing.

Program information for Excelsior Prep was not available in the data provided, so details on extracurriculars, enrichment, or specific academic programming are gaps a parent would need to fill by contacting the school. The school's website or an in-person visit would be the right place to ask how the K-8 structure is used intentionally, what happens in the upper middle grades as students prepare for high school placement in Miami-Dade, and what evidence the school can point to for student growth over time.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 353%

School 53% · District 69% · ▼ 16 pts below district

▼ 10 pts below state median · ▼ 16 pts below county median

Grade 455%

School 55% · District 68% · ▼ 13 pts below district

▼ 6 pts below state median · ▼ 12 pts below county median

Grade 535%

School 35% · District 62% · ▼ 27 pts below district

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

Grade 642%

School 42% · District 64% · ▼ 22 pts below district

▼ 20 pts below state median · ▼ 21 pts below county median

Grade 724%

School 24% · District 54% · ▼ 30 pts below district

▼ 25 pts below state median · ▼ 29 pts below county median

Grade 847%

School 47% · District 60% · ▼ 13 pts below district

▼ 4 pts below state median · ▼ 12 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 344%

School 44% · District 60% · ▼ 16 pts below district

▼ 12 pts below state median · ▼ 13 pts below county median

Grade 434%

School 34% · District 59% · ▼ 25 pts below district

▼ 20 pts below state median · ▼ 22 pts below county median

Grade 520%

School 20% · District 60% · ▼ 40 pts below district

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

Grade 658%

School 58% · District 63% · ▼ 4 pts below district

▼ 2 pts below state median · ▼ 3 pts below county median

Grade 752%

School 52% · District 62% · ▼ 10 pts below district

▼ 3 pts below state median · ▼ 9 pts below county median

Grade 839%

School 39% · District 60% · ▼ 21 pts below district

▼ 15 pts below state median · ▼ 19 pts below county median

Science

Grade 525%

School 25% · District 56% · ▼ 31 pts below district

▼ 28 pts below state median · ▼ 29 pts below county median

Grade 822%

School 22% · District 46% · ▼ 24 pts below district

▼ 24 pts below state median · ▼ 22 pts below county median

This schoolMIAMI-DADE, 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.