Helen Keller Middle: Most kids here clear the bar, year after year. The question is what happens after that.
Helen Keller posts 60% meeting the standard, and 28.6% 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.
| Scope | % Exceeded | % Met+ | Growth | Absence | Suspension | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| This school | 55 | 29% | 60% | -1.0 | 7.0% | 1.6% |
| CA average · Middle School | 43 | 17% | 39% | +1.5 | 18.5% | 3.7% |
Helen Keller Middle scores 55 of 100 on SchoolScope's Scope Score — the 80th 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 “60% proficient” and call it done. Helen Keller deserves a closer read. The school sits in Long Beach, where two in five students qualify for free or reduced lunch — and reading the numbers without that context misreads the school.
Helen Keller's low-income kids hit 56.2% 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.
The seven-year arc
Climbed from the 68th to the 80th percentile since 2019 — past roughly 200 middle schools.
This school hasn't fully recovered from the pandemic: 60% meet the standard today, versus 65% in 2019 — a gap worth asking about on a visit.
| Grade | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 6 | 73% | 61% | 60% | 57% | 67% |
| Grade 7 | 81% | 73% | 69% | 71% | 71% |
| Grade 8 | 73% | 74% | 60% | 68% | 69% |
| Grade | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 6 | 65% | 35% | 49% | 50% | 53% |
| Grade 7 | 56% | 51% | 46% | 61% | 52% |
| Grade 8 | 44% | 53% | 43% | 47% | 49% |
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 holds steady across grades; the floor rises 1.6pp. The state average falls 0.5pp over the same span. A school visit and conversation with teachers will tell you more than this number.
Helen Keller's most underrated number
56.2% 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
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 Helen Keller Middle in Long Beach, 56.2% of low-income students met or exceeded the ELA standard in 2025, compared to 41.9% district-wide and 38.2% statewide. Helen Keller Middle outperforms its district average for low-income students by 14.3 percentage points in ELA. Other subgroups: Low-Income students (37.8% Math proficient); Hispanic students (65.5% ELA proficient). The largest proficiency gap is 12.9 percentage points for low-income students. Data source: California Department of Education, CAASPP 2024-25. 217 students tested.
8 of 15 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 9.2pp from grade 6 to grade 8 at this school. District average: +5.8pp.
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 people teaching here
Pay is set by the district, not the school.
What gets spent here
These measure different things: this figure is spending attributed to this campus, while district-wide figures also include central administration, districtwide programs, and the state's pension contributions made on the district's behalf — costs that never get assigned to a single school. The district number runs higher at nearly every school, not just this one.
$147 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), 40% met or exceeded the standard — science is tested in grades 5 and 8 but never enters the Scope Score.
Frequently asked questions
Is Helen Keller Middle a good middle school?
What are Helen Keller Middle's CAASPP test scores?
How does Helen Keller Middle rank in California?
Is Helen Keller Middle getting better or worse?
What is the attendance and school culture like at Helen Keller Middle?
How does Helen Keller Middle compare to other schools in Long Beach?
How does Helen Keller Middle serve low-income and underrepresented students?
Your other options
Nearby Middle Schools
3 within ~3 mi · avg 59
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 peer comparisons.
| ELA | Tested | EXC | MET | NEAR | NOT | MET+ | +/CA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 6 | 191 | 29% | 38% | 24% | 9% | 67% | +20 |
| Grade 7 | 163 | 31% | 40% | 20% | 9% | 71% | +23 |
| Grade 8 | 153 | 30% | 39% | 18% | 13% | 69% | +23 |
| Math | Tested | EXC | MET | NEAR | NOT | MET+ | +/CA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 6 | 190 | 28% | 25% | 31% | 17% | 53% | +18 |
| Grade 7 | 163 | 28% | 23% | 34% | 15% | 52% | +18 |
| Grade 8 | 153 | 26% | 23% | 31% | 20% | 49% | +17 |
| Science (CAST) | Tested | EXC | MET | NEAR | NOT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 5/8/11 | 153 | 17% | 23% | 57% | 3% |
CAST is tested in grades 5, 8, and once in high school — not annually. Not part of the Scope Score.
| Subgroup · ELA | Tested | MET+ | vs district | vs CA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Socioeconomically Disadvantaged | 217 | 56.2% | +14 | +18 |
| Hispanic/Latino | 394 | 65.5% | +21 | +27 |
| White | 55 | 81.8% | +5 | +20 |
| School | Dist | Scope | EXC | MET+ | Growth | Susp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Helen Keller Middle ← | — | 55 | 28.6% | 60.0% | −1.0 | 1.6% |
| Oak Middle | 1.8 mi | 67 | 41.9% | 73.1% | −1.5 | 3.1% |
| Sharon Christa McAuliffe Middle | 2.2 mi | 56 | 34.6% | 63.8% | −5.2 | 2.0% |
| Stanford Middle | 2.2 mi | 55 | 31.5% | 61.1% | +0.5 | 6.9% |
| California average | — | 43 | 16.8% | 39.3% | +1.5 | 3.7% |
| Year | Scope | Pctile | Rank | Exc | Met+ | Absent | Susp | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 47 | 68 | #632 | 28.2% | 65.3% | 4.0% | 0.7% | -10.3pp |
| 2022 | 63 | 90 | #207 | 24.4% | 57.8% | 14.3% | 1.4% | +15.4pp |
| 2023 | 51 | 73 | #591 | 21.5% | 54.6% | 11.2% | 2.4% | -2.7pp |
| 2024 | 61 | 88 | #273 | 27.6% | 59.0% | 8.4% | 2.0% | +4.1pp |
| 2025 | 55 | 80 | #447 | 28.6% | 60.0% | 7.0% | 1.6% | -1.0pp |
| Group | 2019 | 2025 | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Female | 2.2% | 6.7% | +4.5pp |
| Male | 5.7% | 6.7% | +1.0pp |
| Black/African American | 0.0% | 15.8% | +15.8pp |
| Filipino | 0.0% | — | — |
| Hispanic/Latino | 5.0% | 7.2% | +2.2pp |
| Students with Disabilities | 0.0% | 22.7% | +22.7pp |
| English Learners | 0.0% | 11.8% | +11.8pp |
| Homeless | 9.1% | 13.3% | +4.2pp |
| Socioeconomically Disadvantaged | 7.1% | 10.9% | +3.8pp |
| All Students | 3.9% | 6.7% | +2.8pp |
| Two or More Races | — | 8.7% | — |
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