The top reported proficiency rate is 34% in Math. The lowest is 5% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Chattahoochee Elementary School
Chattahoochee Elementary sits on Maple Street in a small rural town on the bluffs above the Apalachicola River at the Florida-Georgia line. It is the only school physically located within Chattahoochee itself; publicly reported sources note that the town's high school closed years ago, so families with older children send them outside town to consolidated Gadsden County schools for middle and high school. That means this building is where the town's youngest kids spend their elementary years, and it carries a distinctly community-embedded quality rather than a sprawling campus feel.
The school is small, even by the standards of its rural setting. It serves children from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. The student body is predominantly Black, with smaller shares of white and Hispanic students. A very high proportion of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the economic realities of a town where home values run well below both state and national medians and where the dominant employer is a state-operated psychiatric facility. The data did not include IEP or English learner rates, so those dimensions of the student support picture are not available here.
The academic results on Florida's FAST assessments are low and a parent should go in with eyes open. In third grade math, the school shows a meaningfully higher proficiency rate than in the older grades, but by fourth grade math the proportion of students scoring proficient drops sharply, and fifth grade math sits not much above that floor. Reading follows a similar pattern: third grade ELA is the relative high point, but fourth and fifth grade ELA proficiency rates are quite low. The fifth-grade science result on the Florida Statewide Science Assessment is very low. Trend data across years was not available, so it is not possible to say from this data whether things have been improving or declining. A parent would do well to ask the school directly about what academic supports are in place, how students at different skill levels are identified and helped, and what the school's own goals are for improvement.
The comparison exercise for Gadsden County produced only one district in the county, so a meaningful peer-district ranking on proficiency was not possible.
The town itself is slow-paced and low-cost. Publicly reported sources describe a historic downtown along Washington Street with 1800s brick storefronts, a Heritage Park with a railroad caboose and a community mural, and access to riverfront nature at Angus Gholson Nature Park and Three Rivers State Park nearby. Car dependence is the norm. The local economy never fully recovered after an interstate highway bypassed the old US 90 corridor decades ago, and the town experienced long population decline before a recent near-flat stabilization. A Main Street revitalization effort has been underway for some years. The housing market is substantially cheaper than the Florida average, and home values have moved downward recently, which makes the area accessible for buyers on modest incomes but reflects limited local economic momentum.
No information on district strategic priorities or major operational changes in Gadsden County schools was found before the research budget was exhausted, so that context was left out rather than guessed at.
For a family already living in Chattahoochee, this is where elementary-age children go. For a family considering a move to the area, the academic proficiency results are a real consideration and warrant a direct conversation with the school about intervention programs, classroom support, and the path students take as they move on to middle school outside the town.
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