The top reported proficiency rate is 17% in Math. The lowest is 16% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Riverbend Academy
Riverbend Academy is a small, non-charter special education school in Tequesta, Florida, serving students from the early grades through high school. Its enrollment is very small, in the range typical of specialized therapeutic or disability-focused programs, and understanding its purpose is the starting point for any family considering it. This is not a general-enrollment school competing on the same measures as a traditional public or charter campus. It is a designated special education school, which shapes everything about how its academic results should be read.
Florida's state testing results are available for some grade levels, and the reported proficiency rates are low in absolute terms, across both ELA and math, for the grades where data was not suppressed. Most grade-level results were suppressed entirely, which is common at very small schools where small group sizes trigger privacy protections. The grades where results appear show that only a minority of students are reaching Florida's proficiency threshold on the FAST assessments and the statewide science assessment. A parent should weigh those figures alongside a direct conversation with the school about what its students' goals and IEPs look like, since state proficiency benchmarks are designed for general-education populations and may not map meaningfully onto the individualized pathways a special education school is built around. Graduation rate data was not available in this data set.
Free-and-reduced lunch participation data was not reported, and IEP and English learner rates, which would normally be among the most telling figures for a school of this type, are also absent. The racial composition of the student body reflects a mix that includes white students as the plurality, with meaningful representation from Black and Hispanic students as well. Enrollment spans elementary through high school grades on paper, though very few students appear in the elementary grades; the bulk of the enrollment is concentrated in the middle and upper grades.
The school sits in Tequesta, a small, affluent residential village at the northern edge of Martin County, on the Loxahatchee River near the Atlantic coast. Publicly reported sources describe it as a planned community that has remained deliberately compact for decades, built around waterfront estates, a country club, and low-density neighborhoods. The commercial core along Tequesta Drive is modest but walkable, with local restaurants, boutiques, and a brewery tasting room. Most residents drive; public transit is limited, and reaching the village from the south or east involves crossing a bridge. The village is largely built out, and recent growth has taken the form of luxury condominium redevelopments and a small townhome community rather than large subdivisions. The housing market here is well above both the Florida and national medians, and rents are also high relative to typical incomes, which reflects Tequesta's standing as one of the more expensive residential communities on the Treasure Coast.
Riverbend Academy falls within the Martin County School District, which earned a publicly reported top state accountability grade from the Florida Department of Education for the 2024-2025 school year, its first at that level in some time. The district has also passed two successive voter referendums renewing a school operating property tax that funds teacher pay, school safety, mental health programs, and academic initiatives, along with a capital sales tax that supported school renovation and replacement projects across the county. Those district-level investments in staffing and facilities set the broader context, though Riverbend operates as a specialized program and a family's conversation with the school directly would matter more than district-level performance trends.
For a family whose child has been placed at or is exploring Riverbend Academy, the questions worth pursuing with the school directly include what specific disabilities or learning profiles the program serves, how individualized instruction is delivered across such a wide grade span, what the transition-to-adulthood planning looks like for older students, and how the school communicates with families about progress against IEP goals rather than state proficiency benchmarks.
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