The top reported proficiency rate is 47% in Science. The lowest is 33% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Davis Elementary School
Davis Elementary sits on Memorial Highway in Tampa's westside, serving prekindergarten through fifth grade as a regular public school in Hillsborough County. The school draws a heavily Hispanic student population, reflecting the demographic character of the surrounding neighborhood, and a large share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, placing it among schools with substantial economic need. Data on English learner enrollment and special education rates were not available in what was provided.
On state assessments, Davis's results from the most recent FAST testing are below what most parents would hope to see. In reading, proficiency rates across the tested grades run from the low to upper thirties, meaning fewer than four in ten students in those grades are meeting the state standard in English language arts. Math results are modestly stronger, running through the low-to-upper forties across third through fifth grade. Fifth-grade science sits in a similar range. These figures are not unusually low for a school serving a high-poverty, largely English-learner-adjacent community, but a parent thinking about early literacy and numeracy foundations should ask the school directly what targeted supports and intervention programs are in place for students who are not yet proficient. Multi-year trend data was not available, so it is not possible to say from this data whether results are improving, holding, or declining.
Because this is a prekindergarten through fifth grade school, there is no graduation rate to report, and the graduation rate measure simply does not apply here. The comparison framework available covers Hillsborough County districts, but because only one district operates in the county, no meaningful peer comparison on proficiency or absenteeism could be constructed. Chronic absenteeism data for the school was also not provided.
The school's neighborhood sits within a broad Tampa context that is worth understanding. Tampa is a large, economically layered city anchored by healthcare, defense, higher education, and financial services employers. The area around Memorial Highway is west of the downtown core, away from the more intensively redeveloping districts like Water Street and the Channel District, which are concentrated east and downtown. The housing market in the school's zip code is currently priced near the national median for home values, with rents running at a level where housing costs consume a substantial share of a typical household's income. Home values in the zip have been roughly flat to slightly down over the past year, while rents have declined modestly, both trends diverging from longer-term appreciation. Buyers should note that Hillsborough County voters approved a one-mill property tax increase in November 2024, running through 2029, intended to fund teacher and staff pay supplements across the district. This adds a real annual cost for homeowners and reflects the district's effort to address teacher shortages structurally.
Hillsborough County Schools also carried out a significant boundary rezoning that took effect for the 2024-25 school year, affecting a large number of schools and potentially shifting many thousands of students to different assigned schools. Families should verify current attendance zone assignments directly with the district, as boundary lines in this rezoning cycle may not match older maps.
Program information for Davis Elementary was not available in the data provided, so it is not possible to describe specific enrichment, intervention, or extracurricular offerings beyond what the school communicates directly.
For a family weighing Davis Elementary, the picture is of a neighborhood school serving a predominantly Hispanic, economically mixed community in west Tampa, with proficiency rates that are currently below the halfway mark in most tested subjects and grades. Those numbers are worth a direct conversation with the school about what academic support structures look like grade by grade, particularly for reading in the early elementary years.
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