The top reported proficiency rate is 51% in English language arts. The lowest is 17% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on San Jose Early College at Cecil
San Jose Early College at Cecil is a small charter school in Jacksonville, Florida, serving students from sixth through twelfth grade. It sits on the west side of the city, near Cecil Commerce Center, and its name signals the school's core promise: a pathway to college credit while students are still enrolled in secondary school, through a partnership with Florida State College at Jacksonville.
The enrollment is quite small for a school spanning six grade levels, and the distribution is uneven, with the middle school cohort notably thin compared to the upper grades. This means the peer community is intimate, which will appeal to some families and feel limiting to others. Demographically, the school is racially diverse, drawing Black, white, and Hispanic students in substantial shares alongside smaller groups. Roughly half of enrolled students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Data on students with IEPs or English learners was not available in the data provided.
The academic picture from Florida's state assessments is mixed and deserves careful attention. Sixth-grade ELA proficiency is a genuine strength, sitting at a level well above where most middle school cohorts land. Math proficiency in seventh grade comes in around the middle range, and eighth-grade math is comparable. The story in ELA gets weaker as grades rise: seventh and eighth-grade ELA proficiency rates drop sharply from the sixth-grade result, with eighth-grade ELA among the lower readings in the data. Eighth-grade science proficiency is the most concerning figure, running well below state norms by any typical standard. These results are from a single year, and the data does not allow year-over-year trend analysis, so a parent may want to ask the school directly about what trajectory looks like for students who enter in middle school and what academic supports are in place, especially in science and writing-intensive ELA in the upper middle grades.
Graduation rate data was not reported in the available data, which is a meaningful gap for a school that extends through twelfth grade. Similarly, course access details, AP or dual-enrollment enrollment figures, and staffing information were not available, despite the school's early college positioning. The concept of an early college school typically means students can accumulate college credits before graduation, which is a concrete pathway advantage worth asking the school to document with specifics on which FSCJ courses are accessible, at what grade, and what the completion patterns look like.
A comparison against other districts in Duval County could not be generated because the comparison set was too small to produce a meaningful index, so no relative positioning is available here.
The housing market around the school's zip code on Jacksonville's west side shows home values running below the Florida state median by a meaningful margin and below national median as well, making the area more accessible than many parts of the Jacksonville metro. Values have edged down slightly over the past year. Rents in the area are roughly flat year over year. Jacksonville broadly is identified by publicly reported sources as one of the country's faster-growing metro areas, with downtown development accelerating and the metro projected to grow well above the national average through the rest of the decade. The west side sits outside the downtown transformation zone, but the city's overall growth context means school populations and community resources are likely to shift over time.
For a family weighing this school, the central question is whether the early college pathway is real and accessible in practice. The small size and intimate environment can work well for students who do not thrive in large comprehensive settings. The ELA sixth-grade results suggest some incoming cohorts are academically capable, but the drop in proficiency across subsequent grades is something to press on with school leadership before enrolling a middle schooler. District-level strategic priorities for Duval were not surfaced in available research, so that context is absent here.
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