Golden Elementary: High scores, real growth, strong attendance. We looked for a catch — we didn't find one.
Golden posts 70.1% 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.
Golden Elementary scores 94 of 100 on SchoolScope's Scope Score — the 99th 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 “89% proficient” and call it done. Golden deserves a closer read. It sits at the 99th percentile of 5,721 California elementary schools — but the ranking is the least interesting thing on this page.
Golden's low-income kids hit 79.2% 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.
- This school94/100Strongelementary scale
- Col. J. K. Tuffree Middlemiddle scale
| Scope | % Exceeded | % Met+ | Growth (2023 G3 → 2025 G5) | Absence | Suspension | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| This school | 94 | 70% | 89% | Strong · p96 | 3.8% | 0.1% |
| CA average · Elementary School | 39 | 21% | 43% | Average · p50 | 17.9% | 1.6% |
The seven-year arc
Has held the 99th-percentile line every tested year since 2019.
Proficiency here is back to its pre-pandemic level — 89% meet the standard, about where the school stood in 2019.
| Grade | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 3 | 87% | 90% | 83% | 84% | 85% |
| Grade 4 | 86% | 90% | 93% | 90% | 91% |
| Grade 5 | 93% | 84% | 92% | 94% | 92% |
| Grade 6 | 93% | 93% | 90% | 93% | 92% |
| Grade | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 3 | 81% | 89% | 82% | 96% | 90% |
| Grade 4 | 90% | 88% | 89% | 88% | 89% |
| Grade 5 | 86% | 82% | 91% | 93% | 89% |
| Grade 6 | 90% | 89% | 85% | 88% | 89% |
Where its students land
The school, grade by grade
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 11.8pp across grades; the floor rises 7.0pp. The state average rises 4.6pp 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.
Golden's most underrated number
79.2% 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 6 things our score weighs
returning cohort
Percent exceeded, ELA only. SchoolScope's scored growth measure uses a different metric — mean scale-score change across ELA and Math; California's own matched-student model is below.
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. The two measures land in the same neighbourhood here — ours puts this school around the 96th percentile of California elementary schools, the state's around the 88th in reading and math together. Two different methods agreeing is the most you can ask of one year of test data.
— 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 how teachers track each child's growth over the year, not just where the class lands on test day.
- 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 Golden Elementary in Placentia, 79.2% of low-income students met or exceeded the ELA standard in 2025, compared to 52.2% district-wide and 38.2% statewide. Golden Elementary outperforms its district average for low-income students by 27.0 percentage points in ELA. Other subgroups: Low-Income students (80.5% Math proficient); Asian students (97.1% ELA proficient). The largest proficiency gap is 16.8 percentage points for hispanic students. Data source: California Department of Education, CAASPP 2024-25. 125 students tested.
8 of 17 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.
Low-income student ELA proficiency rises by 10.5pp from grade 3 to grade 5 at this school. District average: +0.7pp.
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
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 Dorado High, which sent 40 graduates to UC campuses last fall and teaches 21 AP subjects. Those numbers describe past cohorts — a child starting here today would reach El Dorado High around 2035, and 10 years is a long time for a school to hold still, and by the state's 2023 count 83% of El Dorado 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
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
At 834 students, this school is well above 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), 84% 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 Golden Elementary a good elementary school?
What are Golden Elementary's CAASPP test scores?
How does Golden Elementary rank in California?
Is Golden Elementary getting better or worse?
What is the attendance and school culture like at Golden Elementary?
How does Golden Elementary compare to other schools in Placentia?
How does Golden Elementary serve low-income and underrepresented students?
What middle school does Golden Elementary feed into?
Your other options
Nearby Elementary Schools
3 within ~3 mi · avg 71
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 | 92 | 64% | 21% | 7% | 9% | 85% | +42 |
| Grade 4 | 135 | 70% | 21% | 6% | 3% | 91% | +47 |
| Grade 5 | 158 | 76% | 16% | 5% | 3% | 92% | +44 |
| Grade 6 | 151 | 72% | 20% | 6% | 2% | 92% | +46 |
| Math | Tested | EXC | MET | NEAR | NOT | MET+ | +/CA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 3 | 92 | 65% | 25% | 8% | 2% | 90% | +45 |
| Grade 4 | 137 | 67% | 22% | 9% | 2% | 89% | +48 |
| Grade 5 | 159 | 78% | 11% | 7% | 4% | 89% | +54 |
| Grade 6 | 151 | 73% | 17% | 7% | 3% | 89% | +55 |
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 | 159 | 55% | 28% | 16% | 1% |
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 | 125 | 79.2% | +27 | +41 |
| Asian | 312 | 97.1% | +8 | +23 |
| White | 88 | 81.8% | +7 | +20 |
| School | Dist | Scope | EXC | MET+ | Grade gap | Cohort growth | Susp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Golden Elementary ← | — | 94 | 70.1% | 89.4% | +3.0pp | +96 pts | 0.1% |
| Olinda Elementary | 1.1 mi | 72 | 54.3% | 78.6% | −2.3pp | — | 0.2% |
| Sierra Vista Elementary | 1.3 mi | 71 | 51.4% | 79.7% | +2.4pp | — | 0.1% |
| Lakeview Elementary | 1.4 mi | 69 | 56.9% | 81.1% | −8.7pp | — | 0.1% |
| California average | — | 39 | 21.4% | 42.7% | −2.9pp | — | 1.6% |
| Year | Scope | Pctile | Rank | Exc | Met+ | Absent | Susp | Grade gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 88 | 99 | #51 | 68.2% | 87.2% | 2.9% | 1.2% | +5.6pp |
| 2022 | 93 | 99 | #31 | 70.7% | 87.2% | 7.2% | 1.3% | -6.0pp |
| 2023 | 90 | 99 | #43 | 67.5% | 88.1% | 9.3% | 1.2% | +9.4pp |
| 2024 | 96 | 99 | #2 | 72.4% | 90.6% | 6.2% | 0.2% | +3.6pp |
| 2025 | 94 | 99 | #4 | 70.1% | 89.4% | 3.8% | 0.1% | +3.0pp |
| Group | 2019 | 2025 | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Female | 3.2% | 3.1% | -0.1pp |
| Male | 2.0% | 3.4% | +1.4pp |
| Asian | 1.3% | 1.4% | +0.1pp |
| Filipino | 0.0% | 7.1% | +7.1pp |
| Hispanic/Latino | 4.8% | 9.2% | +4.4pp |
| Two or More Races | 0.0% | 0.0% | +0.0pp |
| White | 4.0% | 1.8% | -2.2pp |
| Students with Disabilities | 8.2% | 13.3% | +5.1pp |
| English Learners | 7.3% | 8.1% | +0.8pp |
| Homeless | 0.0% | 28.9% | +28.9pp |
| Socioeconomically Disadvantaged | 6.5% | 7.4% | +0.9pp |
| All Students | 2.6% | 3.2% | +0.6pp |
| Group | Reading | n | CDE band | Math | n | CDE band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All Students | +13 | 438 | Accelerated | +18 | 438 | Accelerated |
| English Only | +10 | 304 | not categorised | +14 | 304 | not categorised |
| Asian | +18 | 265 | Accelerated | +25 | 265 | Exceptional |
| Socioeconomically Disadvantaged | +7 | 95 | Accelerated | +12 | 95 | Accelerated |
| White | +9 | 67 | Accelerated | +15 | 67 | Accelerated |
| Hispanic or Latino | +1 | 51 | Average | +1 | 51 | Average |
| English Learner | +15 | 48 | Accelerated | +31 | 48 | Exceptional |
| Recently Reclassified Fluent-English Proficient Only | +16 | 46 | not categorised | +30 | 46 | not categorised |
| Two or More Races | +8 | 40 | Accelerated | +20 | 40 | Exceptional |
| Students with Disabilities | +12 | 32 | Accelerated | 0 | 32 | Average |
| Homeless Youth | 0 | 13 | Average | +18 | 13 | 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