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See the school. Beyond the score.
A school’s rating is a handful of results stacked into one number. We pull them apart, show where each comes from, and name what none of them can see.
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Try a city, ZIP, or school:Pasadena94110 · San FranciscoWakefield Elementary · Turlock
Inside a Scope Score
- The Scope ScoreShareOne number per school, made of the layers below
- Results at the top level42%Academic Performance
- Results at or above the standard23%Academic Performance
- Grade 3-to-5 growth20%Academic Performance
- Chronic absence5%School Climate
- Suspensions5%School Climate
- English learners at ELPAC's top level5%School Climate
- Who attends, gaps between student groups, spending0%Shown beside the score, never counted in it
- What the score can’t seeYour child's teacher · Arts, clubs and daily life · Whether IEP services reach the classroom · Whether your child will belong. None of these is in our score or in the state data files it's built from.
- The Scope ScoreShareOne number per school, made of the layers below
- Results at the top level42%Academic Performance
- Results at or above the standard23%Academic Performance
- Grade 6-to-8 growth20%Academic Performance
- Chronic absence5%School Climate
- Suspensions5%School Climate
- English learners at ELPAC's top level5%School Climate
- Who attends, gaps between student groups, spending0%Shown beside the score, never counted in it
- What the score can’t seeYour child's teacher · Arts, clubs and daily life · Whether IEP services reach the classroom · Whether your child will belong. None of these is in our score or in the state data files it's built from.
- The Scope ScoreShareOne number per school, made of the layers below
- Graduation rate25%Academic Performance
- Results at the top level22%Academic Performance
- College/Career Indicator20%Academic Performance
- Results at or above the standard18%Academic Performance
- Chronic absence5%School Climate
- Suspensions5%School Climate
- English learners at ELPAC's top level5%School Climate
- Who attends, gaps between student groups, spending0%Shown beside the score, never counted in it
- What the score can’t seeYour child's teacher · Arts, clubs and daily life · Whether IEP services reach the classroom · Whether your child will belong. None of these is in our score or in the state data files it's built from.
Start here
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Should I worry about that rating?
See what’s behind the number at your kid’s school, and what to ask at the next conference.
What a low score meansLook one layer down
Same headline. Different schools.
At McKinley Elementary in Santa Monica and Eastbluff Elementary in Newport Beach, about 62% of kids met or beat California’s standard.
Count the filled dots. At McKinley, 45% beat the standard. At Eastbluff, 24%. Both are Strong schools, strong in different ways, and every profile shows you which.
Why 80% “met or exceeded” can mean two different schools
CAASPP 2025–26, grades 3–5, reading and math averaged. McKinley: 83rd percentile · Strong. Eastbluff: 78th percentile · Strong.
45% beat the standard · 62% met or beat it
24% beat the standard · 62% met or beat it
Show your work
Every number has a source and a year.
We build SchoolScope from 30 public datasets and print the source and year beside the numbers they produce, even when the data is older than we’d like.
When we get something wrong, the correction stays on the page it fixes, dated, with what changed.
The California sources and their years
| Source | What it tells us | Year |
|---|---|---|
| California | ||
| CAASPP Smarter Balanced tests | Who met and who beat the standard, and how each class grew between tests | 2023–24 to 2025–26 |
| CDE chronic absenteeism | Kids missing at least one school day in ten | 2025–26 |
| CDE suspension rates | Kids suspended at least once | 2025–26 |
| CDE Student Growth Model | How much the same students gained against the state's expectation. Shown on profiles, not scored | 2025–26 |
| Every state | ||
| NCES attendance boundaries | Which schools an address feeds | 2015–16 |
| NCES Private School Survey | Private schools’ size, grades and affiliation | 2021–22 |
The schools we coverCalifornia, one dot per school
We’ve mapped California, one dot per school. We’re adding states one at a time, because each one tests differently.
We’ve mapped California. We’re adding states one at a time, because each one tests differently.
Browse California schoolsWe haven’t mapped yet. We’re adding states one at a time, and each one gets its own method before we score a school there.
Guides
Plain answers to common school questions.
What we stand on
A short list of things we won’t do.
- Sell a better score. No one can pay to change a school’s score, its rank or its place on a list.
- Put demographics in the score. Who a school serves is context, shown beside the score and never counted in it.
- Score private schools on tests they don’t take. We show what they do report, and say what’s missing.
- Rank schools where enrollment is assigned. For 368 court, community and special-education schools, we publish the evidence and withhold the rank.
- Rate individual teachers. Not now, not later.
- Pass off a guess as a fact. Every profile says what its numbers can’t tell you, and ends with a question to ask on a visit.
“As a parent looking at schools, I wanted to understand what drove a score—and what it missed.”
I built SchoolScope because I needed it. The goal is to help families look closer, understand the limits, and ask better questions.
Start with the school you’re wondering about.
Search California schoolsOpen the map
California · CAASPP 2025–26 · Data sources · How scores are calculated