The top reported proficiency rate is 72% in English language arts. The lowest is 36% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Berkley Accelerated
Berkley Accelerated is a charter school in Auburndale, Florida, serving grades six through ten. It sits within the Polk County school system but operates independently as a charter, drawing students who are presumably seeking a faster or more rigorous academic track, as the name suggests. Program details were not available in the data we reviewed, so a parent will want to ask the school directly about curriculum structure, acceleration pathways, and what the "accelerated" designation means in practice for course pacing and high school credit.
The school's enrollment is substantial for its grade band, with students spread across the middle and early high school years. The student body is predominantly white, with Hispanic students making up a meaningful share, and smaller representations of Black, Asian, and multiracial students. About a third of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which places the school in a moderately mixed economic range. Data on English learners and students with IEPs was not reported, so those dimensions of the student support picture are unclear.
State testing results from Florida's FAST assessments tell a varied story across grades and subjects. Sixth-grade math proficiency is genuinely strong, among the higher results a middle school reader would expect to see, and sixth-grade ELA is also solid. By seventh grade, both subjects step down noticeably. Eighth-grade math proficiency is low, well below what one might hope for in a school billing itself as accelerated, and ELA and science at eighth grade are also below midrange. Whether this reflects the curriculum compressing content in ways that affect tested outcomes, a particular cohort pattern, or something else is not clear from the data alone. A parent considering this school for a student entering or already in the middle grades should ask the school about its eighth-grade performance trajectory and how it connects to ninth and tenth grade coursework.
Graduation rate data is not applicable here in the traditional sense, since the school only extends through tenth grade. There is no senior class to produce a four-year cohort graduation figure. What happens to students after tenth grade, and how they transition to a graduating high school, is a practical question worth raising with the school directly.
Berkley Accelerated is located in Auburndale, a small Central Florida city positioned between Lakeland and Winter Haven in Polk County. Publicly reported sources describe it as one of the faster-growing communities in the region, with large-scale residential development underway in what is being called the North Auburndale Lakes District, plus activity from several national homebuilders. Home values in the area run below both the state and national medians, and recent trends show a modest softening in prices while rents have ticked slightly upward. For a family relocating into the area, Auburndale offers relative affordability within the broader Orlando-Tampa corridor, with a small historic downtown core, recreational access to multiple lakes, and a growing infrastructure base that includes a new civic center on Lake Ariana and connections to the Florida Coast-to-Coast Trail.
The local economy leans on logistics, distribution, and manufacturing, with anchors including healthcare distribution and third-party logistics companies, alongside the broader employment base tied to Lakeland. The city also participates in the Central Florida Innovation District, which connects it to Florida Polytechnic University and a vehicle testing facility.
For the Polk district brief, the search found no confirmed parent-relevant policy or program changes to report, so we left that section out rather than speculate.
A family drawn to an accelerated academic model in a growing, lake-oriented small city will find Berkley Accelerated worth a close look, particularly at the younger middle grades where performance is strongest. The eighth-grade results and the school's ten-grade ceiling are the two things a parent will want to understand clearly before committing.
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