The top reported proficiency rate is 46% in Science. The lowest is 38% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on R. V. Daniels Elementary School
R. V. Daniels Elementary is a small public school in Jacksonville's 32209 zip code, serving kindergarten through fifth grade within the Duval County Public Schools system. The school draws from a neighborhood on Jacksonville's west side, not far north of downtown, and its enrollment is small even by the standards of a school serving only the early elementary grades.
The student body is predominantly Black, with a much smaller share of Asian students and very small numbers of students from other racial and ethnic backgrounds. A majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting a community where household economic pressure is a real factor in daily school life. Data on students with IEPs or English learner designations was not available, so those dimensions of the student support picture are missing here.
State assessment results from Florida's FAST and Statewide Science Assessment paint a mixed picture. In reading, the school's fourth and fifth graders are scoring at or above the majority-proficient mark, which stands out as a genuine strength relative to what many schools in high-poverty contexts produce at those grade levels. Third-grade reading proficiency is considerably lower, and that gap is worth asking the school about directly, since third-grade reading is a strong predictor of later academic trajectory in Florida. In math, proficiency rates across third, fourth, and fifth grade are all below the majority threshold, ranging from well under half to just under half of students meeting the bar. Fifth-grade science proficiency sits at roughly the midpoint. A sixth-grade ELA score appears in the data but was suppressed, likely due to small group size. No multi-year trend data was available, so it is not possible to say from this data whether performance is moving up, down, or holding steady.
The comparison framework the data provides is limited. Duval County has only two districts in the county comparison set, which is too small to produce a meaningful proficiency ranking, so no position among county peers can be stated here.
On programs, the data provides nothing. No information on enrichment, arts, special services, after-school programming, or any other offerings was available. That is a notable gap for a family weighing this school, and a direct conversation with the school or the Duval district would be the right way to fill it.
The housing market surrounding the school reflects a neighborhood that sits well below both the Florida statewide median and the national median for home values, and the local value has declined modestly year over year. Rents in the zip code are relatively low and have edged up slightly. For families renting or buying in this part of Jacksonville, housing costs are substantially more accessible than in many other parts of the metro, though the neighborhood's economic context is reflected in those figures.
Jacksonville itself is an enormous, still-growing city. Publicly reported projections describe the Jacksonville metro as expanding at more than twice the national average pace, and the downtown core in particular is in the middle of a large wave of residential and commercial construction. The 32209 area sits between downtown and the city's northwest side, closer to the core than most of the city's suburban growth, but not in the middle of the new downtown development either. The city runs largely on car travel outside its walkable pockets, and families should expect that to be true in this part of town.
The Duval district brief search was exhausted without surfacing confirmed recent district-level changes relevant to parents, so that dimension is left out rather than guessed at.
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