The top reported proficiency rate is 65% in Science. The lowest is 34% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Cedar Hills Elementary School
Cedar Hills Elementary sits in the 32210 zip code on Jacksonville's westside, a part of the city that sits well outside the walkable downtown core. Jacksonville is a sprawling place, car-dependent across most of its geography, and this neighborhood reflects that character. The area is largely residential, removed from the boutique districts of Riverside and San Marco, though those are reachable by car. The broader metro is growing quickly, publicly reported as one of the country's faster-expanding areas, with major downtown investment underway, but that momentum is concentrated several miles away from Cedar Hills' immediate surroundings.
The school serves kindergarten through fifth grade, so graduation rates do not apply here, and the comparison set for positioning among Duval County districts is too small to produce a meaningful relative ranking. The numbers available come from Florida's FAST assessments and the statewide science exam, and they tell a clear story: proficiency rates sit below where most families would hope.
In reading and English language arts, results are low across all three tested grades. Third-grade ELA proficiency is the weakest point in the data, and while fourth and fifth grade show some improvement, the fifth-grade rate still leaves more than half of students below the proficient threshold. Math results follow a similar pattern in the lower grades but show a more encouraging picture by fifth grade, where just over half of students tested proficient. Science, tested only in fifth grade, is the strongest result in the data set and stands out clearly from the ELA and math figures, with nearly two-thirds of fifth graders reaching proficiency on the Florida Statewide Science Assessment. A parent who wants to understand why the ELA and math trajectories look the way they do, what the school is doing to accelerate reading growth in the early grades, and how students are prepared for middle school would be well served by asking those questions directly.
The student body is sizable for an elementary school of this kind. The population is racially and ethnically diverse, with Black students comprising roughly half the enrollment, Hispanic students making up close to a fifth, and white and Asian students each representing smaller shares. A substantial majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which places this among Florida schools with higher concentrations of economic need. Data on students with IEPs and English learner status were not available in the data provided.
Housing in the zip code is priced well below Florida's statewide median and well below national norms. The typical home value here has dipped modestly year over year, making this one of the more accessible entry points into Jacksonville homeownership. Rents have edged slightly upward over the same period but remain affordable relative to the region. The rent-to-income ratio and the gap between renting and buying both suggest this is a neighborhood where buying is financially within reach for households at or near the median income, a real distinction in a housing market where affordability has tightened statewide.
Program-specific information for Cedar Hills was not available in the data provided, so it is not possible to characterize enrichment offerings, intervention structures, or extracurricular programs beyond what the test results suggest about academic outcomes.
The Duval district brief returned no confirmed parent-relevant changes within the research window, so district-level context on staffing, curriculum shifts, or school improvement plans was not available to include here. Families who want that context would need to go directly to Duval County Public Schools.
What the data shows, plainly, is a school with a diverse student population, a community facing real economic pressures, and academic outcomes that are below state norms in reading and math, with a notably stronger result in fifth-grade science. Those gaps in ELA are worth understanding in depth before enrolling.
See more original research from School Decision →