Columbine Elementary: Most kids here clear the bar, year after year. The question is what happens after that.
Columbine posts 54% meeting the standard, and 29.2% going well past it. Most kids here keep up. Fewer get pushed further. Ask the school what it does for a child who already finds the work easy.
Columbine Elementary scores 51 of 100 on SchoolScope's Scope Score — the 77th percentile of 5,721 California elementary schools (CDE CAASPP 2025).
Measures test performance, attendance, and climate — not arts, community, or your kid. How we score →
Culture First — Ask whether the low absenteeism and suspension numbers come from what the school does or from the community it serves — both can produce the same numbers, and only a visit tells you which.
Most rating sites would stop at “54% proficient” and call it done. Columbine deserves a closer read. More than half of its students qualify for free or reduced lunch (California: 64%) — and reading the numbers without that context misreads the school.
Columbine's low-income kids hit 78.4% proficiency in ELA — a number the same group reaches at 38.2% statewide. If you're trying to read past zip-code-driven test scores, that's the signal worth weighing.
| Scope | % Exceeded | % Met+ | Growth | Absence | Suspension | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| This school | 51 | 29% | 54% | — | 4.2% | 0.4% |
| CA average · Elementary School | 39 | 21% | 43% | — | 17.9% | 1.6% |
The seven-year arc
Has stayed near the 77th percentile since 2019.
Proficiency here is back to its pre-pandemic level — 54% meet the standard, about where the school stood in 2019.
| Grade | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 3 | 55% | 43% | 54% | 62% | 50% |
| Grade 4 | 67% | 45% | 52% | 61% | 31% |
| Grade 5 | 57% | 67% | 52% | 59% | 70% |
| Grade 6 | 58% | 72% | 77% | 72% | 73% |
| Grade 7 | 73% | 89% | 67% | 86% | 83% |
| Grade 8 | 80% | 76% | 95% | 88% | 82% |
| Grade | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 3 | 50% | 35% | 54% | 69% | 57% |
| Grade 4 | 57% | 30% | 39% | 57% | 54% |
| Grade 5 | 48% | 57% | 33% | 41% | 65% |
| Grade 6 | 58% | 56% | 77% | 78% | 64% |
| Grade 7 | 64% | 67% | 61% | 82% | 67% |
| Grade 8 | 67% | 59% | 63% | 69% | 82% |
Where its students land
Columbine's most underrated number
78.4% of low-income students met the ELA standard — versus 38.2% for the same group statewide. That's the strongest kind of signal a school can post: it holds across income lines.
The 5 things our score weighs
California's own answer to the same question
California runs its own growth model — it follows individual children in grades 4 through 8 and compares each one against a prediction from their own prior scores. On that measure this school sits well above the middle of California elementary schools in reading and math together. We show it; we don't score it.
— 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 elementary school lands at +2 in reading, and the middle half of them fall between −5 and +9 — 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 extra support — tutoring, counseling, small groups — reaches kids across income lines, not just the students already ahead.
- 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 Columbine Elementary in Delano, 78.4% of low-income students met or exceeded the ELA standard in 2025, compared to 78.4% district-wide and 38.2% statewide. Columbine Elementary outperforms its district average for low-income students by 0.0 percentage points in ELA. Other subgroups: Low-Income students (70.3% Math proficient); Hispanic students (63.9% ELA proficient). Data source: California Department of Education, CAASPP 2024-25. 37 students tested.
6 of 11 student groups here are too small to report — a privacy protection, not a gap.
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.
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 elementary school — not against zero, and not against this school's all-students figure, because the state's expectation already differs by group.
— 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
Columbine Elementary serves grades TK-8. We don’t have attendance-boundary data showing which high school students here continue to, and we’d rather leave this blank than guess from whichever school happens to be nearest. The district office can tell you which high school your address is zoned for.
The people teaching here
Pay is set by the district, not the school.
What gets spent here
$604 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.
The neighborhood it serves
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates (2024) · ZIP-level
At 172 students, this school is much smaller than the typical California elementary school (≈480).
Transitional kindergarten is offered here — confirmed by actual Census Day enrollment, not just the listed grade span.
On the state's science test (CAST), 49% 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 Columbine Elementary a good elementary school?
What are Columbine Elementary's CAASPP test scores?
How does Columbine Elementary rank in California?
What is the attendance and school culture like at Columbine Elementary?
How does Columbine Elementary compare to other schools in Delano?
How does Columbine Elementary serve low-income and underrepresented students?
Your other options
Nearby Elementary Schools
3 within ~3 mi · avg 36
Nearby Middle Schools
2 within ~3 mi · avg 46
Nearby High Schools
2 within ~3 mi · avg 58
Private alternatives nearby
Private schools within ~10 miles. These schools do not participate in state testing and cannot be scored or ranked.
Every number on this page
Score factors, grade-level breakdowns, subgroup proficiency, and nearest schools.
| ELA | Tested | EXC | MET | NEAR | NOT | MET+ | +/CA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 3 | 14 | 43% | 7% | 29% | 21% | 50% | +7 |
| Grade 4 | 13 | 23% | 8% | 31% | 38% | 31% | −14 |
| Grade 5 | 23 | 22% | 48% | 17% | 13% | 70% | +22 |
| Grade 6 | 22 | 45% | 27% | 27% | 0% | 73% | +27 |
| Grade 7 | 18 | 33% | 50% | 11% | 6% | 83% | +36 |
| Grade 8 | 22 | 50% | 32% | 14% | 5% | 82% | +36 |
| Math | Tested | EXC | MET | NEAR | NOT | MET+ | +/CA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 3 | 14 | 29% | 29% | 7% | 36% | 57% | +12 |
| Grade 4 | 13 | 15% | 38% | 38% | 8% | 54% | +13 |
| Grade 5 | 23 | 43% | 22% | 26% | 9% | 65% | +30 |
| Grade 6 | 22 | 45% | 18% | 23% | 14% | 64% | +29 |
| Grade 7 | 18 | 39% | 28% | 22% | 11% | 67% | +33 |
| Grade 8 | 22 | 45% | 36% | 0% | 18% | 82% | +50 |
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 | 45 | 13% | 36% | 49% | 2% |
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 | 37 | 78.4% | +0 | +40 |
| Hispanic/Latino | 97 | 63.9% | +0 | +25 |
| School | Dist | Scope | EXC | MET+ | Grade gap | Cohort growth | Susp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Columbine Elementary ← | — | 51 | 29.2% | 54.4% | +13.8pp | — | 0.4% |
| Morningside | 2 mi | 43 | 21.8% | 44.0% | +1.9pp | — | 0.5% |
| Princeton Street Elementary | 2.5 mi | 33 | 13.8% | 31.3% | −10.5pp | — | 2.0% |
| Terrace Elementary | 2.6 mi | 32 | 14.7% | 36.5% | −9.2pp | — | 0.3% |
| California average | — | 39 | 21.4% | 42.7% | −2.9pp | — | 1.6% |
| Year | Scope | Pctile | Rank | Exc | Met+ | Absent | Susp | Grade gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 49 | 71 | #1591 | 26.7% | 55.6% | 2.1% | 0.3% | -0.1pp |
| 2022 | 43 | 69 | #1785 | 21.2% | 46.2% | 8.6% | 0.7% | +22.8pp |
| 2023 | 43 | 67 | #1853 | 19.7% | 47.6% | 6.0% | 0.3% | -11.3pp |
| 2024 | 51 | 77 | #1293 | 25.5% | 58.0% | 5.9% | 1.2% | -15.4pp |
| 2025 | 51 | 77 | #1303 | 29.2% | 54.4% | 4.2% | 0.4% | +13.8pp |
- — Scored here as an elementary school — other grade spans appear in the data appendix.
| Group | 2019 | 2025 | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Female | 0.0% | 0.0% | +0.0pp |
| Male | 0.0% | 0.0% | +0.0pp |
| Hispanic/Latino | 0.0% | 0.0% | +0.0pp |
| White | 0.0% | — | — |
| English Learners | 0.0% | 0.0% | +0.0pp |
| Military-Connected | 0.0% | — | — |
| Socioeconomically Disadvantaged | 0.0% | 0.0% | +0.0pp |
| All Students | 0.0% | 0.0% | +0.0pp |
| Asian | — | 0.0% | — |
| Students with Disabilities | — | 0.0% | — |
| Group | Reading | n | CDE band | Math | n | CDE band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All Students | +18 | 96 | Accelerated | +22 | 96 | Exceptional |
| Hispanic or Latino | +18 | 83 | Accelerated | +20 | 83 | Exceptional |
| English Only | +15 | 78 | not categorised | +19 | 78 | not categorised |
| Socioeconomically Disadvantaged | +18 | 52 | Accelerated | +29 | 52 | Exceptional |
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. “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. 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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SchoolScope scores and verdicts are our interpretation of public California Department of Education data — independent analysis, not an official rating. How we analyze · Request a correction