Madison County Central School, Madison FL

Original Research by School Decision on Madison County Central School

Madison County Central School sits on US 90 on the western edge of Madison, a small rural North Florida county seat surrounded by farms, pastures, and timber land. The school serves pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, making it the single traditional public campus for the youngest students in the county. That singular status is not accidental: the district voted in 2024 to close its three outlying elementary schools in Greenville, Lee, and Pinetta, consolidating all Pre-K through grade six students onto this campus beginning with the 2025-26 school year. The closed properties have since been listed for sale, signaling the change is permanent. For families in those outlying communities, this means a longer commute to school and no neighborhood elementary option to fall back on. Parents weighing whether to put down roots in the rural parts of Madison County should factor this in directly.

The student body is large for a single PK-8 campus, and it grew further with consolidation. A very substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, one of the higher poverty concentrations possible at a school, which tells you something meaningful about the economic conditions of the families this building serves. The school is predominantly Black, with white and Hispanic students making up most of the remainder, alongside smaller groups.

On Florida's state assessments, proficiency rates across math, reading, and science are low across every tested grade. In math, roughly three in ten students scored proficient in most grades, with a modest uptick in seventh grade. Reading results follow a similar pattern, with third-grade ELA proficiency particularly low and upper-elementary grades only modestly higher. Fifth-grade science proficiency is quite low; eighth-grade science is somewhat better but still well below a majority of students reaching proficiency. These are the kinds of numbers that a parent should take seriously and ask the school directly about: what does the school's academic intervention look like, how are students who are behind in reading identified early, and what supports exist for students working toward grade-level math skills? The data across grade levels is consistent enough that this is not a single-grade anomaly; it is a school-wide pattern worth a direct conversation. Multi-year trend data was not available in the comparison set, so it is not possible from this data alone to say whether results are improving, holding, or declining.

No program-specific information was available for this school, so details on gifted services, extracurriculars, or enrichment offerings could not be confirmed here.

The town itself is a compact historic county seat, walkable at its downtown core with brick streets, a central park, antique shops, and a few restaurants, though the broader county is rural and car-dependent. North Florida College is located in Madison, providing a local community college option that is publicly reported as serving multiple surrounding rural counties, which is a practical asset for older students eventually considering post-secondary paths. The housing market is notably affordable, with median home values well below both the Florida statewide level and the national level, and the local price-to-income ratio is comparatively modest. Population growth is slow and gradual, and the housing stock skews older with a notable share of mobile homes countywide. For families considering a move, Madison offers lower housing costs than most of Florida, a genuinely rural setting, and a small-town community feel, alongside the tradeoffs that come with a single-school option for grades PK-8 and academic outcomes that sit well below state norms.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 332%

School 32% · District 54% · ▼ 22 pts below district

▼ 31 pts below state median

Grade 432%

School 32% · District 41% · ▼ 9 pts below district

▼ 29 pts below state median

Grade 528%

School 28% · District 31% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▼ 27 pts below state median

Grade 632%

School 32% · District 42% · ▼ 10 pts below district

▼ 30 pts below state median

Grade 741%

School 41% · District 48% · ▼ 7 pts below district

▼ 8 pts below state median

Grade 827%

School 27% · District 28% · ▼ 1 pts below district

▼ 24 pts below state median

English language arts

Grade 318%

School 18% · District 43% · ▼ 25 pts below district

▼ 38 pts below state median

Grade 433%

School 33% · District 40% · ▼ 7 pts below district

▼ 21 pts below state median

Grade 524%

School 24% · District 36% · ▼ 12 pts below district

▼ 30 pts below state median

Grade 635%

School 35% · District 44% · ▼ 9 pts below district

▼ 25 pts below state median

Grade 736%

School 36% · District 41% · ▼ 5 pts below district

▼ 19 pts below state median

Grade 829%

School 29% · District 37% · ▼ 8 pts below district

▼ 25 pts below state median

Science

Grade 513%

School 13% · District 31% · ▼ 18 pts below district

▼ 40 pts below state median

Grade 832%

School 32% · District 39% · ▼ 7 pts below district

▼ 14 pts below state median

This schoolMADISON, 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 4Lower-income31%Higher-income46%15 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income34%Higher-income40%6 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income32%Higher-income56%24 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income30%Higher-income26%4 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 4Lower-income33%Higher-income27%5 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income30%Higher-income40%10 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income39%Higher-income50%11 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income29%Higher-income18%11 pp gap