The top reported proficiency rate is 58% in Science. The lowest is 48% in Math.
Original Research by School Decision on David C. Hinson Sr. Middle School
David C. Hinson Sr. Middle School sits on North Clyde Morris Boulevard in Daytona Beach, a few miles from both the Halifax River downtown and the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University campus. It serves sixth through eighth graders in Volusia County's regular public school system, with an enrollment that puts it on the larger end for a standalone middle school. More than half of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, pointing to a community that skews working-class and mixed-income.
The student body is racially mixed, with white students making up roughly half the enrollment, Black students accounting for about a quarter, and Hispanic, multiracial, and Asian students comprising most of the remainder. Data on students with IEPs and English learners was not available in the records reviewed.
On the Florida state assessments administered in the most recent school year, Hinson's results tell a mixed story. Sixth-grade proficiency in both math and reading lands just above half of tested students, which is a meaningful baseline but leaves a substantial share of students not yet at grade level. Eighth-grade math sits in a similar range, and eighth-grade science comes in slightly above that. The sharpest gap appears in seventh-grade math, where proficiency drops noticeably compared to the other grade levels, a pattern a parent would reasonably want to ask the school about directly. ELA proficiency in seventh and eighth grades holds roughly around half, consistent across those two grades. Multi-year trend data was not available, so whether these results represent improvement, stability, or decline from prior years cannot be assessed here.
Comparison against other districts in Volusia County was not possible because Hinson is within the county's only district, so no meaningful peer benchmark could be constructed.
The one program documented in available records is band. No other course offerings, dual-enrollment options, athletics, or extracurricular programs were listed in the data received. The school website would be the right place to get a fuller picture of what is actually available to students.
Chronic absenteeism and discipline data were not available for this school.
For families weighing housing, the ZIP code surrounding the school reflects home values well below both the Florida and national medians. Prices have softened year over year. Rents in the area also sit below state norms, and rent-to-income ratios here land at roughly the boundary where housing economists typically consider costs to transition from manageable to burdensome, meaning renters in this neighborhood are not deeply stressed but are not in particularly affordable territory either. Daytona Beach overall is a city in a moderating growth phase after a construction surge earlier this decade, with new residential development concentrated mainly along the LPGA Boulevard corridor, new apartment projects in various stages, and a healthcare expansion from AdventHealth underway. The employment base spans insurance, healthcare, education, motorsports, and retail, with Brown and Brown Insurance, Halifax Health, Embry-Riddle, and Volusia County Schools among the larger local employers, according to publicly reported information.
The Volusia district brief was searched but no recently confirmed parent-relevant policy or programmatic changes were found before the research budget was exhausted, so that section is left out rather than speculated on.
Hinson is a mid-sized public middle school in a coastal city with a genuinely diverse student population, below-median housing costs, and academic results that sit in the middle range statewide. Families prioritizing test-score attainment will want to probe further, particularly around what the school is doing in seventh-grade math. Those whose priorities center on affordability, demographic diversity, and a central Daytona Beach location will find the context here relatively straightforward.
See more original research from School Decision →