Westside Middle School, Jacksonville FL

Original Research by School Decision on Westside Middle School

Westside Middle School sits on Wesconnett Boulevard in the western part of Jacksonville, serving sixth through eighth graders as a regular public school within Duval County Public Schools. The neighborhood is well removed from the city's downtown core and the walkable pockets of Riverside or San Marco; like most of Jacksonville's residential west side, the area is auto-oriented and suburban in character.

The school draws a majority-Black student body, with a substantial Hispanic enrollment and smaller shares of white and multiracial students. A large majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, placing Westside among schools serving communities with real economic pressure. Data on English learner enrollment and students with IEPs was not available in the records reviewed.

On Florida's FAST assessments, the academic picture is a genuine soft spot and parents should go in clear-eyed. Proficiency rates in reading across all three grade levels are low, clustered in the mid-to-upper twenties. Math results are similarly modest across sixth and eighth grade, with seventh grade performing somewhat better but still well below a majority of students reaching proficiency. Eighth-grade science proficiency, measured by the Florida Statewide Science Assessment, is lower still. These are the most recent results available, from the 2024-25 school year. Trend data was not available, so whether the school is moving in a positive direction is something a parent would want to ask the school directly. The comparison dataset available covers districts in Duval County, but because it contains too few entries for a meaningful ranking, no peer positioning can be drawn from it.

A graduation rate does not apply here, as Westside serves only middle grades. No information on course offerings, extracurricular programs, discipline data, or chronic absenteeism was available in the data reviewed. The district brief search was exhausted without confirming specific recent changes or initiatives at the Duval level, so strategic priorities or investments that might affect this school were left out rather than guessed at.

The surrounding Jacksonville housing market gives some context for families weighing a move to the area. Home values in the zip code are meaningfully below the Florida state benchmark and also below the national figure, making the west side of Jacksonville one of the more affordable entry points in a metro that has publicly been called out as a growth market. Rents in the area are relatively modest as well, with the rent-to-buy math showing only a small gap between renting and a mortgage payment, which is worth noting for families deciding between the two. Home values in the zip have edged slightly downward year over year, tracking a similar mild decline seen statewide.

Jacksonville itself is a sprawling, rapidly growing city. Health care, logistics, military, and financial services anchor its economy, and downtown is in the middle of a wave of residential and commercial investment that has drawn national attention. For families on the west side, that downtown activity is geographically distant from daily school-zone life, though the city's freeway grid does connect the west side to employment centers across the metro.

For a family whose child will attend Westside, the academic proficiency data is the piece that warrants a direct conversation with the school: what supports are in place for students who are not yet reading or doing math at grade level, and what does the school see as its trajectory. The data on its own does not answer those questions.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 627%

School 27% · District 47% · ▼ 20 pts below district

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

Grade 740%

School 40% · District 43% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▼ 9 pts below state median · ▲ 4 pts above county median

Grade 824%

School 24% · District 47% · ▼ 23 pts below district

▼ 27 pts below state median · ▼ 17 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 633%

School 33% · District 49% · ▼ 15 pts below district

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

Grade 726%

School 26% · District 48% · ▼ 22 pts below district

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

Grade 825%

School 25% · District 47% · ▼ 22 pts below district

▼ 29 pts below state median · ▼ 17 pts below county median

Science

Grade 819%

School 19% · District 37% · ▼ 18 pts below district

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

This schoolDUVAL, 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.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 6Lower-income36%Higher-income29%7 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income26%Higher-income25%1 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income27%Higher-income22%5 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 6Lower-income26%Higher-income29%3 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income39%Higher-income41%2 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income25%Higher-income22%3 pp gap