Alachua County, Florida
Explore our literacy landscape.
An interactive map of early literacy in Alachua County, Florida. Choose a lens below to change what the map shows, then explore it by year and place.
Outcomes over time
Reading results from public schools across Alachua County, year by year since 2010. Follow grades 3–5 ELA through the timeline, or switch to the fall kindergarten readiness check.
2022–23 Readiness rule: 690+The FAST (Florida Assessment of Student Thinking) Star Early Literacy check, under the readiness rule adopted in 2018.
2024–25 Readiness rule: 707+The same fall check, with a new state readiness threshold adopted in 2024.
Each standard set its own test and requirements. A school’s color shows how it did against the requirement in place that year. School performance is only directly comparable under the same standard. Go down to to learn more.
Understand the data
Program reach
See Imagination Library reach across the program ZIP areas, month by month. Color shows the selected measure—current enrollment (blue), registrations to date (green), graduates to date (gold), or books mailed to date (purple).
Understand the data
What this shows. Each shaded area is a ZIP where Gainesville Thrives mails free Imagination Library books. Fill color is the percentage of eligible children under 5 currently enrolled.
How to read it. Enrollment is a point-in-time count; graduates and registrations are running totals. In popups, registration share is its own measure: the share of all registrations, not of eligible children. None of these are school test results. To protect family privacy, the program never publishes an exact count under 10 — those show as “<10”, and their percentages as “<N%”, at the low end of the color scale.
Where and when it’s from. Live Gainesville Thrives program data. Boundaries are the Census Bureau’s 2020 ZIP Code areas, which come close to — but don’t exactly match — the postal delivery routes.
Census estimates
Neighborhood conditions that shape access to reading, like family income, internet access, and adult education, estimated by the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
2020–2024 Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates. Click a block group for counts and margins of error. These are population estimates, never student records.
Understand the data
What this shows. Census survey estimates for each of Alachua County’s 160 block groups: children ages 5–9, children under 6 with all parents in the labor force (working or looking for work), single-parent families, poverty, SNAP food assistance, households without a vehicle, adults without a high school diploma, limited-English-speaking households, internet access for households and for children, and household income—conditions connected to literacy access.
How to read it. These are survey estimates, not counts of individual people and never student records. Every popup shows the margin of error—small areas can have wide margins, so treat close colors as similar, not ranked. Nothing here is a cause, diagnosis, or neighborhood score.
Where and when it’s from. The 2020–2024 American Community Survey 5-year release (tables B01001, B11003, B15003, B19013, B22010, B23008, B25044, B28002, B28005, C16002, and C17002), extracted through Census Reporter. Boundaries are the Census Bureau’s 2024 TIGERweb block-group geography.
Community supports
Find places where books, connection, and community already live—every public school, the organizations partnering with Gainesville Thrives, libraries, and more.
Understand the data
What this shows. Places where books and community already live: organizations partnering with Gainesville Thrives, every current Alachua County Library District branch, every public school campus in the county—district-run and charter, elementary through high school—every campus of the county’s two public colleges (the University of Florida and Santa Fe College, each with its campus grounds outlined), and the county-wide directory of faith communities.
How to read it. Markers are places, not endorsements or program listings. A faith community is simply a place of worship from a community-maintained directory, not a claim of an active literacy program.
Where and when it’s from. Partner organizations are recorded by Gainesville Thrives volunteers. Library locations were checked against the library district’s site on July 17, 2026. Public schools are the 2024–25 federal public-school directory (NCES Common Core of Data): every open district and charter campus, with virtual programs and the classrooms inside the county jail, juvenile detention center, and hospital program left off because they are not visitable campuses. College campuses come from the University of Florida’s and Santa Fe College’s own location pages, checked July 25, 2026 (the federal IPEDS college directory confirms these are the county’s only two public institutions): UF’s main campus and its East Campus offices on Waldo Road, plus every Santa Fe campus in the county. Santa Fe’s Andrews and Watson centers sit in neighboring counties and UF Online is virtual, so they do not appear. Campus grounds are outlined from OpenStreetMap for the UF main campus and Santa Fe’s Northwest and Davis campuses, and from each campus’s property parcels in the Florida Department of Revenue statewide parcel roll for the Blount, Kirkpatrick, and Perry centers. The faith-community directory is also extracted from OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL)—each faith popup links to its live entry. The organization’s original c. 2016–2018 faith directory is preserved in the 2016 map lens.
The 2016 map
The original map, preserved as a dated planning snapshot.
2016 map ingredients
Tap to show or hideTry a closer look. Zoom in to reveal historic census borders and child counts. The heat colors show concentration, not school grades or neighborhood rankings.
Understand the data
What this shows. The organization’s original literacy map, preserved exactly as it was. The heat surface shows where lower (blue) through higher (red) student ELA scores concentrated in 2016, alongside that era’s school zones, schools, child counts, and faith communities.
How to read it. This is a dated planning snapshot, not a picture of today—colors show concentration, never school grades or neighborhood rankings. It is kept because the underlying student-level raster was lost, making these tiles the only surviving form of that analysis.
Where and when it’s from. Heat tiles and child counts are from 2016; school zones, school locations, and the faith directory are approximately 2016–2018. Gainesville Thrives saved all of it on July 17, 2026 from the earlier public version of the map before it went offline.
ELA year and grade timeline
Use Left and Right Arrow to move through available years. The 2020 statewide assessment is an unavailable gap. Assessment bands mark results that should only be compared within the same era.
Program reach month timeline
Use Left and Right Arrow to move month by month across the program's history. Some ZIP areas have gaps—before they came online, or months a combined invoice reported no per-ZIP split—and a gap month shows no fill for that area.