Arden Middle: This school runs ahead of the state average. The bar itself is the harder conversation.
Arden posts 42% meeting the standard against 39% statewide — ahead of most, with real headroom above the bar.
| Scope | % Exceeded | % Met+ | Growth (2023 G6 → 2025 G8) | Absence | Suspension | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| This school | 35 | 17% | 42% | Below avg · p40 | 20.8% | 6.8% |
| CA average · Middle School | 38 | 17% | 39% | Average · p50 | 18.5% | 3.7% |
Arden Middle scores 35 of 100 on SchoolScope's Scope Score — the 47th percentile of 2,238 California middle schools (CDE CAASPP 2025).
Measures test performance, attendance, and climate — not arts, community, or your kid. How we score →
🌱 Building Momentum — This label means the data doesn't clearly sort the school one way or the other — ask what the school is proud of, and what it's working on.
Most rating sites would stop at “42% proficient” and call it done. Arden deserves a closer read. The school sits in Sacramento, where two in five students qualify for free or reduced lunch — and reading the numbers without that context misreads the school.
The seven-year arc
Slipped from the 67th to the 47th percentile since 2019.
This school hasn't fully recovered from the pandemic: 42% meet the standard today, versus 50% in 2019 — a gap worth asking about on a visit.
| Grade | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 6 | 47% | 52% | 46% | 43% | 45% |
| Grade 7 | 64% | 62% | 52% | 45% | 52% |
| Grade 8 | 47% | 41% | 51% | 56% | 56% |
| Grade | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 6 | 43% | 33% | 43% | 30% | 31% |
| Grade 7 | 54% | 41% | 39% | 36% | 32% |
| Grade 8 | 43% | 33% | 35% | 34% | 35% |
The story this school is actually telling
The school, grade by grade
ELA · CAASPP 2024–25Different students, same year — each bar is one grade's proficiency mix.
The honest read: the share exceeding rises 10.4pp across grades; the floor rises 10.6pp. The state average rises 0.1pp over the same span. Kids here gain ground the longer they stay — the pattern you want to see. A school visit and conversation with teachers will tell you more than this number.
The 6 things our score weighs
California's own answer to the same question
California runs its own growth model, following individual children in grades 4 through 8 rather than comparing school-wide averages the way we do — and its two subjects part company here. It puts this school around the 86th percentile of California middle schools in reading and the 45th in math; ours, which blends the subjects, lands around the 40th. A gap that size between reading and math in one building is worth asking about directly — one year of data can't tell you whether it is the teaching, the cohort, or noise.
— pts vs expected is scale-score points above or below what California's model predicted for these same children from their own prior-year scores. It is not a percentage and not a percent of anything. A typical California middle school lands at −1 in reading, and the middle half of them fall between −8 and +6 — the spread is wide, so read the rank, not the sign. CDE blends two consecutive years into each published figure, so adjacent years share input data and no year-over-year trend can honestly be drawn from them. It covers grades 4-8 only, and it is not part of the Scope Score — we assessed it and left it out: it tracks school demographics roughly three times as strongly as our own growth measure does, and one published year is not enough to test how stable it is.
Ask how the school challenges kids who clear the standard early. The gap between meeting and exceeding is where pacing shows.
- Ask whether the tour can step into a working classroom — watch how the teacher handles a student who's stuck.
- Ask to tour while school's in session, and notice how hallways and transitions feel — culture shows up between classes, not just in them.
- Ask how the school communicates with families when a child starts to struggle.
- Ask what a typical day looks like for a new student in the first few weeks.
How every group of students does here
At Arden Middle in Sacramento, 36.8% of low-income students met or exceeded the ELA standard in 2025, compared to 29.1% district-wide and 38.2% statewide. Arden Middle outperforms its district average for low-income students by 7.8 percentage points in ELA. Other subgroups: Low-Income students (19.5% Math proficient); White students (64.4% ELA proficient). The largest proficiency gap is 45.3 percentage points for english learner students. Data source: California Department of Education, CAASPP 2024-25. 479 students tested.
Change in proficiency from the lowest tested grade — which groups gain ground the longer they stay. Groups with fewer than 10 tested students per grade are not shown.
Low-income student ELA proficiency rises by 10.6pp from grade 6 to grade 8 at this school. District average: -3.2pp.
California follows these children individually and predicts each one's score from their own prior year. Each row is read against the same group at a typical California middle school — not against zero, and not against this school's all-students figure, because the state's expectation already differs by group.
— 1 more group is reported here with between 11 and 29 students. We hold those back on purpose: at that size the figure swings about 17 points on its own, and a quarter of such groups land past the state's top or bottom cut point by chance alone. They are listed with their student counts in the data appendix. — A group not listed at all had fewer than 11 students with a growth score, so California published nothing for it here. That is a privacy protection, not a judgment about those students. — Context only. None of this enters the Scope Score.
Showing up, and staying in class
Where the path goes
The path below follows attendance boundaries — scores shown for each next step.
Feeder patterns derived from NCES attendance boundary data. Boundaries are approximate and may have changed — verify with your school district for current assignments.
The road from this school ends at El Camino Fundamental High, which sent 14 graduates to UC campuses last fall and teaches 20 AP subjects. Those numbers describe past cohorts — a child starting here today would reach El Camino Fundamental High around 2031, and 6 years is a long time for a school to hold still, and by the state's 2023 count 76% of El Camino Fundamental High's graduates enrolled in college somewhere, UC or not.
The people teaching here
Pay is set by the district, not the school.
What gets spent here
$403 per student arrives as federal Title funding — a measure of concentrated need, not school quality.
The district's current expense of education per student, from CDE's annual SACS filing — the freshest district spending figure the state publishes.
District-level, from the district's own SACS general-ledger filing — school-by-school breakdowns aren't published by the state.
Source: NCES F-33 · Full district breakdown →
The neighborhood it serves
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates (2024) · ZIP-level
On the state's science test (CAST), 30% met or exceeded the standard — science is tested in grades 5 and 8 and once in high school, and it never enters the Scope Score.
Frequently asked questions
Is Arden Middle a good middle school?
What are Arden Middle's CAASPP test scores?
How does Arden Middle rank in California?
Is Arden Middle getting better or worse?
What is the attendance and school culture like at Arden Middle?
How does Arden Middle compare to other schools in Sacramento?
How does Arden Middle serve low-income and underrepresented students?
Your other options
Nearby Middle Schools
3 within ~3 mi · avg 28
Private alternatives nearby
Private schools within ~10 miles. These schools do not participate in state testing and cannot be scored or ranked.
A low score doesn't tell the whole story. Read: Your School Scored Low — Here's What That Actually Means
Every number on this page
Score factors, grade-level breakdowns, subgroup proficiency, and nearest schools.
| ELA | Tested | EXC | MET | NEAR | NOT | MET+ | +/CA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 6 | 264 | 15% | 31% | 25% | 30% | 45% | −1 |
| Grade 7 | 347 | 16% | 36% | 22% | 26% | 52% | +4 |
| Grade 8 | 346 | 25% | 31% | 22% | 22% | 56% | +10 |
| Math | Tested | EXC | MET | NEAR | NOT | MET+ | +/CA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 6 | 264 | 12% | 19% | 25% | 44% | 31% | −4 |
| Grade 7 | 348 | 15% | 17% | 26% | 42% | 32% | −2 |
| Grade 8 | 342 | 18% | 16% | 23% | 43% | 35% | +2 |
We show the grade rows CDE publishes for this school. A missing grade or dash can mean the school does not serve that grade, no valid result was published, or the tested group was too small to report. It does not mean zero.
| Science (CAST) | Tested | EXC | MET | NEAR | NOT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Schoolwide | 346 | 9% | 21% | 56% | 14% |
CAST is tested in grades 5 and 8, then once in grade 10, 11, or 12. This row is the school's all-student aggregate. Not part of the Scope Score.
| Subgroup · ELA | Tested | MET+ | vs district | vs CA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Socioeconomically Disadvantaged | 479 | 36.8% | +8 | −1 |
| White | 441 | 64.4% | +17 | +3 |
| Hispanic/Latino | 275 | 45.5% | +11 | +7 |
| School | Dist | Scope | EXC | MET+ | Grade gap | Cohort growth | Susp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arden Middle ← | — | 35 | 16.8% | 41.8% | +7.2pp | +38 pts | 6.8% |
| Winston Churchill Middle | 2.9 mi | 53 | 40.9% | 61.8% | −18.0pp | — | 6.3% |
| Arcade Fundamental Middle | 2.7 mi | 24 | 6.5% | 20.0% | +2.6pp | — | 3.0% |
| Katherine Johnson Middle | 1.4 mi | 8 | 0.8% | 6.8% | +0.1pp | — | 9.7% |
| California average | — | 38 | 16.8% | 39.3% | +1.5pp | — | 3.7% |
| Year | Scope | Pctile | Rank | Exc | Met+ | Absent | Susp | Grade gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 43 | 67 | #670 | 20.2% | 49.8% | 9.7% | 7.4% | -0.0pp |
| 2022 | 39 | 65 | #758 | 15.7% | 43.6% | 22.5% | 5.2% | -5.6pp |
| 2023 | 42 | 71 | #632 | 18.8% | 44.5% | 18.3% | 5.6% | -1.7pp |
| 2024 | 35 | 52 | #1070 | 15.2% | 40.5% | 20.2% | 5.9% | +8.5pp |
| 2025 | 35 | 47 | #1179 | 16.8% | 41.8% | 20.8% | 6.8% | +7.2pp |
| Group | 2019 | 2025 | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Female | 9.4% | 17.7% | +8.3pp |
| Male | 10.1% | 23.8% | +13.7pp |
| Asian | 18.8% | 22.1% | +3.3pp |
| Black/African American | 17.6% | 33.3% | +15.7pp |
| Hispanic/Latino | 11.4% | 24.7% | +13.3pp |
| Two or More Races | 18.0% | 16.7% | -1.3pp |
| Students with Disabilities | 17.0% | 31.2% | +14.2pp |
| English Learners | 13.8% | 26.7% | +12.9pp |
| Homeless | 25.0% | 50.0% | +25.0pp |
| Socioeconomically Disadvantaged | 15.5% | 28.0% | +12.5pp |
| All Students | 9.7% | 20.8% | +11.1pp |
| Group | Reading | n | CDE band | Math | n | CDE band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All Students | +13 | 882 | Accelerated | −1 | 866 | Average |
| English Only | +15 | 638 | not categorised | −2 | 627 | not categorised |
| Socioeconomically Disadvantaged | +9 | 435 | Accelerated | −3 | 423 | Average |
| White | +14 | 418 | Accelerated | +1 | 410 | Average |
| Hispanic or Latino | +12 | 252 | Accelerated | −3 | 248 | Average |
| English Learner | +5 | 196 | Accelerated | +2 | 192 | Average |
| Recently Reclassified Fluent-English Proficient Only | +14 | 112 | not categorised | 0 | 110 | not categorised |
| Asian | +6 | 92 | Accelerated | +8 | 88 | Accelerated |
| English Learners Only | −8 | 84 | not categorised | +4 | 82 | not categorised |
| Students with Disabilities | −8 | 75 | Moderate | −9 | 74 | Moderate |
| Two or More Races | +11 | 65 | Accelerated | −9 | 65 | Moderate |
| Black or African American | −4 | 46 | Average | −18 | 46 | Moderate |
| Long-Term English Learner (grades 6-8 only) | −3 | 41 | Average | −3 | 41 | Average |
| Homeless Youth | +4 | 23 | Average | −12 | 23 | Moderate |
Whole scale-score points above or below what CDE's model predicted for these same children from their own prior-year scores — not a percentage, not a percentile. Statewide a typical school lands near +1 with a spread of about 13 points either side, so read a figure against its group's own typical value, not against zero. Muted rows have fewer than 30 students with a growth score — published by CDE, held back from the narrative sections above because at that size the figure swings about 17 points on its own. “Not categorised” is CDE assigning no band — English Only, Recently Reclassified, and English Learners Only receive a value and no band, for every school in the state. It is not a missing number. Long-Term English Learner counts cover grades 6-8 only (CDE), so that row is not comparable to the All Students row. Most figures blend two consecutive years, so adjacent published years share input data and no trend line can honestly be drawn across them. A group absent from this table had fewer than 11 students with a growth score and was never published. Grades 4-8 only. None of this enters the Scope Score — it is more strongly correlated with school demographics than our own growth measure, and one published year is not enough to test its reliability.
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