Pajaro Middle: The scores are below where anyone wants them. Here's what they don't tell you.
Pajaro posts low test scores — and grade 8 tests above grade 6 here this year, by 1.7pp. If this is your zoned school, the numbers below are where to start a conversation, not where to end one.
| Scope | % Exceeded | % Met+ | Growth (2023 G6 → 2025 G8) | Absence | Suspension | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| This school | 17 | 3% | 13% | Weak · p36 | 20.7% | 8.7% |
| CA average · Middle School | 39 | 17% | 40% | Average · p50 | 18.1% | 3.6% |
Pajaro Middle scores 17 of 100 on SchoolScope's Scope Score — the 8th percentile of 2,177 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 “13% proficient” and call it done. Pajaro deserves a closer read. The school sits in Watsonville, where nearly all students qualify for free or reduced lunch — and reading the numbers without that context misreads the school.
Test scores are one lens, and at this school they're a rough one right now. The sections below show the fuller picture — including the parts that are working.
The seven-year arc
Has stayed near the 8th percentile since 2019.
Proficiency here is back to its pre-pandemic level — 13% meet the standard, about where the school stood in 2019.
| Grade | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 6 | 27% | 16% | 17% | — | 17% |
| Grade 7 | 23% | 33% | 20% | 20% | 22% |
| Grade 8 | 21% | 24% | 18% | 13% | 20% |
| Grade | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 6 | 7% | 5% | 10% | — | 6% |
| Grade 7 | 10% | 15% | 6% | 12% | 6% |
| Grade 8 | 4% | 7% | 9% | 5% | 6% |
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 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 here the two measures disagree. Ours puts this school around the 36th percentile of California middle schools; the state's puts it around the 17th in reading and math together — a harder read than ours. We are not going to pretend one of those is the answer. Neither measure sees an individual child's classroom, and a disagreement this size is worth asking the principal about directly.
— 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 what changed in the last two years, and what the school is asking families for. Growth shows up in these numbers a year or two after it shows up in classrooms.
- Ask what typically leads to a suspension, and what happens before it gets there.
- 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 Pajaro Middle in Watsonville, 18.7% of low-income students met or exceeded the ELA standard in 2025, compared to 19.9% district-wide and 38.2% statewide. Pajaro Middle trails its district average for low-income students by 1.2 percentage points in ELA. Other subgroups: Low-Income students (5.1% Math proficient); Hispanic students (19.7% ELA proficient). The largest proficiency gap is 17.0 percentage points for disabilities students. Data source: California Department of Education, CAASPP 2024-25. 369 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 6.4pp from grade 6 to grade 8 at this school. District average: -0.8pp.
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.
— 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 Watsonville High, which sent 31 graduates to UC campuses last fall and teaches 11 AP subjects. Those numbers describe past cohorts — a child starting here today would reach Watsonville High around 2031, and 6 years is a long time for a school to hold still, and by the state's 2023 count 68% of Watsonville 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
$1,627 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
At 398 students, this school is much smaller than the typical California middle school (≈860).
On the state's science test (CAST), 12% 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 Pajaro Middle a good middle school?
What are Pajaro Middle's CAASPP test scores?
How does Pajaro Middle rank in California?
Is Pajaro Middle getting better or worse?
What is the attendance and school culture like at Pajaro Middle?
How does Pajaro Middle compare to other schools in Watsonville?
How does Pajaro Middle serve low-income and underrepresented students?
What high school does Pajaro Middle feed into?
Your other options
Nearby Middle Schools
3 within ~3 mi · avg 18
Nearby Elementary Schools
3 within ~3 mi · avg 27
Nearby High Schools
2 within ~3 mi · avg 46
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 | 122 | 4% | 13% | 19% | 64% | 17% | −29 |
| Grade 7 | 117 | 3% | 19% | 38% | 39% | 22% | −25 |
| Grade 8 | 145 | 3% | 17% | 34% | 46% | 20% | −26 |
| Math | Tested | EXC | MET | NEAR | NOT | MET+ | +/CA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 6 | 124 | 2% | 3% | 15% | 79% | 6% | −29 |
| Grade 7 | 121 | 2% | 4% | 28% | 66% | 6% | −28 |
| Grade 8 | 145 | 2% | 4% | 19% | 74% | 6% | −26 |
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 | 146 | 2% | 10% | 64% | 25% |
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 | 369 | 18.7% | −1 | −20 |
| Hispanic/Latino | 381 | 19.7% | −2 | −19 |
| English Learners | 173 | 5.2% | −0 | −5 |
| School | Dist | Scope | EXC | MET+ | Grade gap | Cohort growth | Susp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pajaro Middle ← | — | 17 | 2.9% | 12.8% | +1.7pp | +35 pts | 8.7% |
| Rolling Hills Middle | 2.6 mi | 26 | 2.2% | 13.3% | +5.4pp | — | 7.6% |
| E. A. Hall Middle | 1.4 mi | 15 | 1.0% | 6.3% | +1.1pp | — | 11.7% |
| Lakeview Middle | 2.7 mi | 14 | 2.0% | 10.2% | +2.5pp | — | 16.3% |
| California average | — | 39 | 17.2% | 40.0% | +1.5pp | — | 3.6% |
| Year | Scope | Pctile | Rank | Exc | Met+ | Absent | Susp | Grade gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 13 | 3 | #1951 | 2.4% | 15.4% | 12.2% | 22.7% | -4.7pp |
| 2022 | 13 | 4 | #2067 | 3.0% | 16.4% | 39.3% | 13.7% | +4.7pp |
| 2023 | 10 | 2 | #2137 | 2.1% | 13.2% | 38.2% | 16.8% | -0.3pp |
| 2025 | 17 | 8 | #2063 | 2.9% | 12.8% | 20.7% | 8.7% | +1.7pp |
- — Low-income students here trail the state average for their group by 20 points in ELA — worth asking how the school is closing that gap.
| Group | 2019 | 2025 | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Female | 11.6% | 18.7% | +7.1pp |
| Male | 12.7% | 22.7% | +10.0pp |
| Hispanic/Latino | 11.8% | 20.5% | +8.7pp |
| Students with Disabilities | 18.4% | 34.4% | +16.0pp |
| English Learners | 11.7% | 20.6% | +8.9pp |
| Homeless | 14.3% | 17.8% | +3.5pp |
| Military-Connected | 9.8% | 23.0% | +13.2pp |
| Socioeconomically Disadvantaged | 11.7% | 20.8% | +9.1pp |
| All Students | 12.2% | 20.8% | +8.6pp |
| Group | Reading | n | CDE band | Math | n | CDE band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All Students | −6 | 365 | Moderate | −18 | 364 | Moderate |
| Hispanic or Latino | −7 | 362 | Moderate | −18 | 361 | Moderate |
| Socioeconomically Disadvantaged | −7 | 351 | Moderate | −18 | 350 | Moderate |
| English Learner | −10 | 275 | Moderate | −20 | 275 | Moderate |
| English Learners Only | −13 | 158 | not categorised | −17 | 158 | not categorised |
| Recently Reclassified Fluent-English Proficient Only | −8 | 117 | not categorised | −22 | 117 | not categorised |
| Homeless Youth | −13 | 116 | Moderate | −15 | 115 | Moderate |
| Long-Term English Learner (grades 6-8 only) | −10 | 111 | Moderate | −13 | 111 | Moderate |
| Students with Disabilities | −7 | 56 | Moderate | −3 | 55 | Average |
| English Only | +1 | 46 | not categorised | −16 | 45 | not categorised |
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. 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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