Best School Districts in Los Angeles County (2026)

You're browsing Redfin on a Tuesday night. The listing says "top-rated school district." But top-rated by whom? Based on what?

We ranked every school district in Los Angeles County using our Scope Score. It blends state test results with a few school-climate measures. The tests are the 2024-25 CAASPP, California's state test in English and math. Chronic absenteeism and suspension rates are separate CDE collections; CAASPP reports test results only. The methodology page lists every input and what each one is worth.

One thing to know before you read the table. The default All Levels view averages every scored campus in a district, elementary through high school. Inside a single school's score we keep the levels apart, because a third grader's test and an eleventh grader's test measure different things. A district average has to put them together. So All Levels is a fair read on how a district's campuses score overall. When you want elementary against elementary, use the Elementary and High School tabs.

Here's what the data actually says.

The top 20 districts, ranked by Scope Score

Data: California Department of Education, CAASPP 2024–25 and CDE Chronic Absenteeism. Live data — this table updates when scores change.

What surprised us

La Cañada takes the overall #1, on the back of one high school

La Cañada Unified leads LA County with an 83.5 All Levels Scope Score across its 4 scored schools. La Cañada High School scores 92.9, tenth of the 1,647 California high schools we rank statewide. With only four campuses in the district, that one score does a lot of work: take it out and the three elementary schools average 80.4, which would put La Cañada behind San Marino. Those elementary schools are strong on their own, but their grade 3 to grade 5 trajectory is flat. Kids arrive doing well and stay there.

We wrote a deeper comparison of La Cañada vs. South Pasadena vs. Arcadia if you're weighing the San Gabriel Valley.

San Marino: still elite, now #2 overall

San Marino Unified sits at #2 overall with 82.1 across 4 scored schools. It's the kind of district that never makes clickbait headlines and then quietly shows up in the data anyway. Chronic absenteeism — the share of students missing at least 10% of the days they were enrolled — averages 3.5% across those four campuses, the lowest in the county's top five. The scores hold up all the way through, too: the district's weakest campus still scores 80.6. Switch to the Elementary tab and its two campuses rank #2 in the county at 81.6, just behind Manhattan Beach's 81.8 and ahead of La Cañada's 80.4.

Manhattan Beach: seven scored schools, none below the 94th percentile

Manhattan Beach Unified ranks #3 overall at 80.6 across 7 scored schools, and no single campus is carrying the rest. Its lowest scorer is Manhattan Beach Middle at 71.8, and even that sits above the 94th percentile of California middle schools. Switch to the Elementary tab and the district takes first place in the county at 81.8, ahead of La Cañada's 80.4. Chronic absenteeism averages 6.2% across its schools.

South Pasadena: the quiet contender

South Pasadena Unified finishes 4th in the county at 79.5, and it's the district on this list parents mention least. Five scored schools, 6.3% average chronic absenteeism, and it sits within a couple of points of Manhattan Beach. Worth a look if the La Cañada price tag is daunting.

El Segundo: strong scores, small district

El Segundo Unified at 74.3 across 4 scored schools isn't the name most parents think of when they think "top LA County district." All four campuses — two elementary, the middle school and the high school — sit above the 93rd percentile statewide, and they do it without the price tag of the beach cities or the San Gabriel Valley enclaves. Worth a look if you're searching south of the 105.

Palos Verdes: it holds up across 15 scored schools

Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified posts 73.7 across 15 scored schools, more than any other district in the county's top ten — Walnut Valley is next at 14. A district that size can't lean on one standout campus the way La Cañada can. Three of its schools score 80 or above; ten of the remaining twelve sit in the 60s and 70s.

Santa Monica-Malibu: high spend, uneven results

Santa Monica-Malibu Unified scores 61.7 overall, with chronic absenteeism averaging 15.5% across its schools.

That 15.5% gives a 300-student campus the same weight as a 3,000-student one. CDE's own district figure doesn't work that way — it divides chronically absent students by enrollment. Add up CDE's school-level counts for Santa Monica-Malibu and we get 16.6% of students, close enough here.

The two numbers can also be miles apart, and Temple City shows why. One of its four scored campuses is a continuation high school — a school students are placed into, not one families choose — where more than half the students are chronically absent. Average that campus in with the other three and Temple City reads 18.7%; count students instead and it's 7.9%. As of August 2026 we leave continuation schools out of district averages entirely (they're compared with other continuation schools instead — here's why), which is why the table above shows Temple City at 7.6%. We show the school average because it's what feeds the Scope Score and the school is what you're choosing. It just doesn't tell you what share of a district's students miss school.

Absenteeism has a lot of causes. Ask a school what's behind a number like that before you read it as a judgment on the teaching.

Student-weighted figures are our arithmetic on CDE's 2024-25 school-level chronic absenteeism file — chronically absent students divided by eligible enrollment, summed across the 15 Santa Monica-Malibu and 8 Temple City campuses in that file. CDE publishes its own district totals, which may differ. CDE absenteeism data files →

What these districts spend — and what it buys

Per-pupil spending adds another dimension to this list. The spending figures come from the most recent federal finance data (NCES, FY2023 current expenditures — excluding one-time capital costs), so they are two school years older than the test scores next to them. The enrollment column is FY2023 too, not today's headcount.

El Segundo spends the least of any district here. At $13,614 per pupil it comes in below everyone else in this table, and it still scores above Santa Monica-Malibu, which spends nearly twice as much per student.

Santa Monica-Malibu spends $24,954 per student, more than anyone else here. Its all-levels score of 61.7 is solid without being elite, and its 15.5% absenteeism pulls down the climate part of the Scope Score. Across these seven districts, spending and scores don't line up at all. What a district spends its money on, and what its students are dealing with day to day, never show up in a per-pupil total.

La Cañada and San Marino both finish above Manhattan Beach while spending less per student than it does. Neither of them is buying its way to the top of this list.

Spending data: NCES Common Core of Data district finance, Annual Survey of School System Finances FY2023 (fiscal year 2022-23). Current expenditures exclude capital outlays. Enrollment is the per-pupil denominator NCES used for that fiscal year; for South Pasadena we divided its $71,196,000 in current expenditures by the published $15,308 per pupil to get 4,651, so that figure is our arithmetic. Look any district up at NCES → · Full methodology →

The elephant in the room: individual schools matter more than districts

Here's the honest caveat. District averages hide enormous variation. Some of the highest-scoring schools in LA County sit inside districts that don't make this list at all.

Overland Avenue Elementary in LAUSD — yes, that LAUSD — scores 86.4 with 70.4% exceeded. That's higher than any elementary school in La Cañada. But LAUSD doesn't crack this list, because averaging its hundreds of campuses together produces a middling number, which is what any ranking built on district averages does to a district that size.

The takeaway: Use this list as a starting point, not a final answer. Then search your actual zip code on SchoolScope and look at individual schools.

What this list doesn't capture

Our Scope Score is built from state test results plus a short list of school-climate measures — the methodology page names all of them and what each is worth. It does not measure:

• Teacher quality or experience
• School culture and community feel
• Arts, music, and enrichment programs
• Class sizes within the school
• How your specific kid would thrive there
• Housing costs (Manhattan Beach and La Cañada are not the same budget)

Test scores are one lens. We say this often because it's true. A great school for your family might not be the highest-scoring one — but knowing the data helps you make that call with your eyes open.

Check your zip code

Don't just look at districts. The school down the street might surprise you.