Duval Charter School at Mandarin, Jacksonville FL

Original Research by School Decision on Duval Charter School at Mandarin

Duval Charter School at Mandarin sits on Shad Road in the Mandarin area of Jacksonville, a suburban corridor on the city's south side well removed from the downtown core. It is a charter school serving kindergarten through eighth grade, meaning a child can spend their entire elementary and middle school years in one building before transitioning elsewhere for high school. The school draws a student body that is racially and ethnically mixed, with white students forming the largest group, Hispanic students the second largest, and Black students a meaningful third, alongside smaller shares of multiracial, Asian, and other students. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, so the population is economically varied. Data on students with IEPs and English learners was not reported, so families with specific support needs would want to ask the school directly about those services and caseloads.

On Florida's FAST assessments, the academic picture is mixed and worth examining closely. Math results are uneven across grade levels: fourth and seventh graders perform noticeably better than their peers in third and sixth, where fewer than half of students scored proficient. ELA proficiency runs consistently below half across most grades tested, with fifth and sixth grade sitting a bit higher than the others. Science scores at both the fifth- and eighth-grade levels land below half. The overall pattern is that proficiency rates in most tested grades and subjects fall in the lower half of what one might hope for, and parents should feel comfortable asking the school about how it addresses students who are not yet at grade level. No multi-year trend data was available, so there is no way from this data alone to say whether results have been moving up or down.

The school publicly offers a small set of clubs, including art, chess, K-Pop, and Lego, which gives some sense of extracurricular life, though the range is modest for a school of this size. No course access or staffing data was provided, and the data did not include information on programs such as dual enrollment, gifted services, or specialized academic tracks, so the school's website would be the right place to explore those questions.

The Mandarin neighborhood sits in a part of Jacksonville that the city's own growth story largely plays out around rather than through. Downtown Jacksonville is in the middle of a well-documented transformation, with publicly reported residential construction, hotel and mixed-use development, a University of Florida graduate campus in LaVilla, and a stadium renovation all advancing at once. The broader metro is publicly described as one of the faster-growing in the country. Mandarin, as a more established suburban area, does not sit at the center of that momentum, but the spillover effects on housing costs are real. Homes near the school are priced roughly in line with the Florida statewide median and very close to the national median, though values have dipped slightly year over year. Rents in the same zip code are modestly above their level from a year ago. The mortgage-to-rent cost difference is narrow, which means buying and renting are reasonably comparable options financially. The area is car-dependent in the way most of Jacksonville outside the historic districts is, and the school's location is typical of that pattern.

The comparison data noted that the proficiency index was not computed because the county's charter comparison set contained too few districts to produce a meaningful ranking. That means there is no peer-group placement available from this data.

We looked for parent-relevant changes from the Duval district, which serves as the charter's authorizing context, but the research did not turn up confirmed recent developments, so we left that out rather than speculate.

See more original research from School Decision →

Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 340%

School 40% · District 59% · ▼ 19 pts below district

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

Grade 462%

School 62% · District 60% · ▲ 2 pts above district

▲ 1 pts above state median · ▲ 6 pts above county median

Grade 552%

School 52% · District 54% · ▼ 2 pts below district

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

Grade 641%

School 41% · District 47% · ▼ 6 pts below district

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

Grade 764%

School 64% · District 43% · ▲ 21 pts above district

▲ 15 pts above state median · ▲ 28 pts above county median

Grade 863%

School 63% · District 47% · ▲ 16 pts above district

▲ 12 pts above state median · ▲ 22 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 340%

School 40% · District 51% · ▼ 11 pts below district

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

Grade 447%

School 47% · District 50% · ▼ 2 pts below district

▼ 7 pts below state median · ▲ 1 pts above county median

Grade 551%

School 51% · District 50% · ▲ 2 pts above district

▼ 3 pts below state median · ▲ 6 pts above county median

Grade 653%

School 53% · District 49% · ▲ 5 pts above district

▼ 7 pts below state median · ▲ 11 pts above county median

Grade 744%

School 44% · District 48% · ▼ 4 pts below district

▼ 11 pts below state median · ▲ 2 pts above county median

Grade 842%

School 42% · District 47% · ▼ 5 pts below district

▼ 12 pts below state median · even with county median

Science

Grade 542%

School 42% · District 52% · ▼ 10 pts below district

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

Grade 838%

School 38% · District 37% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▼ 8 pts below state median · ▲ 7 pts above 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 3Lower-income30%Higher-income46%17 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income44%Higher-income50%6 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income53%Higher-income50%3 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income39%Higher-income62%23 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income41%Higher-income46%5 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income33%Higher-income45%12 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income30%Higher-income47%18 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income54%Higher-income68%14 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income44%Higher-income57%14 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income33%Higher-income49%15 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income60%Higher-income68%8 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income55%Higher-income67%12 pp gap