Students in the Marion County School District scored worse on this year’s Florida Assessment of Student Thinking test series than the vast majority of the rest of the state, generating below-average scores in English, Mathematics, and Science across most grade levels.
The results of the 2025 Florida Assessment of Student Thinking and B.E.S.T. Assessments were recently released by the Florida Department of Education. The data provides insight into the performance of different districts and their respective schools and features 67 different counties and 8 institutions.
The Marion County School District, which is the 20th largest in the state, ranked at or near the bottom in almost every statistical category of importance.
In specific, the data shows the percentage of students in each county who tested at grade level or better across multiple subjects and grades (i.e., 3rd through 10th). In almost every grade and subject, Marion County students tested below the state average, ranking among other counties that are much smaller in size and that possess far smaller budgets and populations.
In English Language Arts, Marion County ranked 56th out of 67 counties in Florida. From the first progress monitoring (PM) assessment to the third, which takes place months later, the average test score improvement in Marion County was 19%. That tied the county for 55th out of 67 counties. In comparison, the statewide average improvement for ELA over the year was 21%.
In Mathematics, Marion County test scores from students in grades 3 through 8 ranked 56th out of 67 counties. Similarly, when measuring the improvement over the year, the county was tied for 56th out of 67 counties at 38%. The statewide average improvement over the school year in mathematics was 44%.
In addition to ELA and Mathematics, test scores in science also showed minimal gains between 2024 and 2025. The data shows that fifth and eighth grade students in Marion County ranked in 51st and 52nd in science improvements, respectively, and that biology students ranked 24th in improvement.
Marion County students showed much better improvements in Civics and U.S. History. However, when compared to the rest of the state, the percentage of students testing above level 3 in those subjects in Marion County ranked the district 55th and 43rd, respectively.
Last year, Ocala-News.com reported similar test score findings, with the county ranking at or near the bottom of every metric. After that story was published, Marion County Public Schools and the Marion County School Board contacted Ocala-News.com with an official statement from the district regarding the scores, noting “improvements” among students.
Weeks after those stories, Ocala-News.com reported that, despite Marion County being one of 20 counties in Florida with over $400 million in state and local funding for schools, Marion County Public Schools once again ranked among the worst in the state in nearly every grade and subject.
Geographically the fifth biggest county in Florida at 1,584 square miles, Marion County is one of only 20 counties in the state with at least 45,000 enrolled students. All the other 47 districts across Florida have enrollments under 40,000 students.
Similar to Ocala-News.com’s reporting last year, in most of the measured test categories, Marion County students scored at the same levels as students in counties that are significantly smaller and have far less state and local funding.
Read the complete results for the 2025 Florida Assessment of Student Thinking and B.E.S.T. Assessments online.
The state will soon release letter grades for all districts and schools. Last year, Marion County received a “C” grade in 2024, ranking among the 17 lowest-performing districts in Florida last school year. The county also graduated one of the lowest percentages of high school students across the state.
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