Summary:
Zip code 32217 in Jacksonville, Florida, is served by three public schools within the Duval County School District, offering a complete K-12 pipeline with one elementary, one middle, and one high school, but the performance across these schools is dramatically uneven.
The standout in this area is Samuel W. Wolfson High School, which ranks in the 99th percentile among Florida high schools (12th out of 838) and boasts exceptional academic outcomes, including a 100% graduation rate and proficiency rates above 90% in all core subjects. In stark contrast, its feeder schools—Alfred I. Dupont Middle School and Kings Trail Elementary School—rank in the bottom 10% of their respective school types statewide, with overall proficiency rates in English Language Arts and Math hovering around 27-41%. This creates a "Wolfson Paradox," where a top-tier high school is fed by two of the lowest-performing schools in the state, suggesting the high school's success is not a simple continuation of a strong K-8 foundation.
Key metrics reveal a strong correlation between socioeconomic factors and performance. Wolfson High has a low poverty rate (12.71% free/reduced lunch) and low chronic absenteeism (17.5%), while Dupont Middle and Kings Trail Elementary have high poverty rates (around 47-51%) and alarmingly high chronic absenteeism (55-59%). Interestingly, the lower-performing schools actually spend more per student ($10,455-$11,179) than Wolfson High ($9,848), indicating that funding alone is not the solution. The data also points to a critical drop-off after elementary school, with Kings Trail showing some relative strength in 4th-grade math (51% proficient) that plummets to 25% proficiency in 6th-grade math at Dupont Middle, a challenge that Wolfson High somehow reverses for the students who eventually arrive.
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