The Jacksonville Real Estate Market and the FCAT

For parents looking for a new home, finding a great school for their children to attend is one of the most important parts of their search. The internet has made this part of the process much easier. Now, homebuyers can obtain information about each school in their area of interest and see the performance of each through Florida's Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). When you're looking for real estate in Jacksonville, you can use Google Maps to see the locations of the schools and rate each by its FCAT score average. School FCAT scores are available for Duval County Schools in Jacksonville and all of the other counties around Jacksonville including St Johns County, Clay, and Nassau, and counties throughout the State of Florida.

Even if you don't have children, it is still important for you to consider the quality of schools in making your home buying decision. If the schools in your area don't perform well, it could make it more difficult to sell your home when that time comes. In short, great schools nearly always help a home retain its value when it comes time to resell.

About the FCAT

The (FCAT) is part of Florida's overall plan to increase student achievement by implementing higher standards. The FCAT is administered to students in Grades 3-11 and contains two basic components: criterion-referenced tests (CRT), measuring selected benchmarks in Mathematics, Reading, and Science (with Writing from the Sunshine State Standards), along with norm-referenced tests (NRT) in Reading and Mathematics, measuring individual student performance against national norms.

The FCAT is a test administered annually in all public Florida schools in February and March. Each public school receives a grade based on the results of the test. The grades range from “A” to “F” with an “A” being the highest grade. To view grade results for any school in the state, visit the grades section (schoolgrades.fldoe.org) of the Florida Department of Education website.

Disclaimer

Even though this information is reliable, you should still verify with the school board what school(s) your child (children) would attend based on the address of your perspective residence. Schools zones do change often and the school board can confirm the specific school zone that corresponds with the location of the home.

	Click on Grade for School Information