Garfield Elementary: High scores, real growth, strong attendance. We looked for a catch — we didn't find one.
Garfield posts 55.5% exceeding the standard — versus 21.4% statewide — with climate numbers better than most. That doesn't make it perfect. It makes it worth a visit to find what numbers can't measure.
| Scope | % Exceeded | % Met+ | Growth | Absence | Suspension | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| This school | 76 | 55% | 83% | — | 15.2% | 0.6% |
| CA average · Elementary School | 39 | 21% | 43% | — | 17.9% | 1.6% |
Garfield Elementary scores 76 of 100 on SchoolScope's Scope Score — the 97th 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 →
⭐ High Ceiling — Ask what happens for a kid who shows up behind — a high ceiling for the top can sit right next to thin support at the bottom, and the score alone won't show you which.
Most rating sites would stop at “83% proficient” and call it done. Garfield deserves a closer read. The school sits in Eureka, where one in four students qualify for free or reduced lunch — and reading the numbers without that context misreads the school.
The headline number: 55.5% of students scored in the top band on the state test. The California average is 21.4%.
The seven-year arc
Climbed from the 85th to the 97th percentile since 2019 — past roughly 700 elementary schools.
The pandemic drop is behind this school: 83% of students meet the standard today, above the 77% who did in 2019.
| Grade | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 3 | — | 69% | 86% | — | 71% |
| Grade 4 | — | — | 75% | 86% | — |
| Grade 5 | 91% | — | — | 73% | 92% |
| Grade | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 3 | — | 77% | 93% | — | 93% |
| Grade 4 | — | — | 58% | 93% | — |
| Grade 5 | 64% | — | — | 55% | 77% |
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 a little 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 what the school is working on next. Strong numbers tell you where a school is, not where it's going.
- 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
8 of 10 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.
— 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
Garfield Elementary serves grades TK-6. 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
What gets spent here
$1,143 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 73 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), 77% 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 Garfield Elementary a good elementary school?
What are Garfield Elementary's CAASPP test scores?
How does Garfield Elementary rank in California?
What is the attendance and school culture like at Garfield Elementary?
How does Garfield Elementary compare to other schools in Eureka?
Your other options
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 | 57% | 14% | 21% | 7% | 71% | +28 |
| Grade 4 | 10 | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Grade 5 | 13 | 46% | 46% | 8% | 0% | 92% | +45 |
| Grade 6 | 10 | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Math | Tested | EXC | MET | NEAR | NOT | MET+ | +/CA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 3 | 14 | 57% | 36% | 7% | 0% | 93% | +47 |
| Grade 4 | 10 | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Grade 5 | 13 | 62% | 15% | 23% | 0% | 77% | +42 |
| Grade 6 | 10 | — | — | — | — | — | — |
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 | 13 | 46% | 31% | 23% | 0% |
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.
| School | Dist | Scope | EXC | MET+ | Grade gap | Cohort growth | Susp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Garfield Elementary ← | — | 76 | 55.5% | 83.4% | +2.5pp | — | 0.6% |
| California average | — | 39 | 21.4% | 42.7% | −2.9pp | — | 1.6% |
| Year | Scope | Pctile | Rank | Exc | Met+ | Absent | Susp | Grade gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 62 | 85 | #836 | 45.5% | 77.3% | 10.2% | 0.9% | — |
| 2022 | 65 | 88 | #660 | 50.0% | 73.1% | 26.0% | 1.4% | — |
| 2023 | 64 | 88 | #691 | 42.3% | 78.0% | 20.1% | 0.6% | — |
| 2024 | 77 | 97 | #145 | 60.2% | 76.5% | 15.7% | 0.6% | — |
| 2025 | 76 | 97 | #159 | 55.5% | 83.4% | 15.2% | 0.6% | +2.5pp |
- — No subgroup comparison could be shown for this school this year — either its group sizes fall under CDE's 15-student reporting floor, or district/state comparison data wasn't available for its groups.
| Group | 2019 | 2025 | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Female | 10.7% | 15.8% | +5.1pp |
| Male | 8.1% | 11.6% | +3.5pp |
| Students with Disabilities | 0.0% | 14.3% | +14.3pp |
| Socioeconomically Disadvantaged | 19.0% | 20.8% | +1.8pp |
| All Students | 9.2% | 13.6% | +4.4pp |
| Group | Reading | n | CDE band | Math | n | CDE band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All Students | +7 | 30 | Accelerated | +7 | 30 | Accelerated |
| English Only | +7 | 30 | not categorised | +6 | 30 | not categorised |
| White | +9 | 22 | Accelerated | +5 | 22 | Accelerated |
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. 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