Ranchos Middle: Most kids here clear the bar, year after year. The question is what happens after that.
Ranchos posts 53% meeting the standard, and 21.6% 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 | 48 | 22% | 53% | — | 10.5% | 4.8% |
| CA average · Middle School | 39 | 17% | 39% | — | 18.5% | 3.7% |
Ranchos Middle scores 48 of 100 on SchoolScope's Scope Score — the 75th 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 “53% proficient” and call it done. Ranchos deserves a closer read. The school sits in Madera, where one in three students qualify for free or reduced lunch — and reading the numbers without that context misreads the school.
Ranchos's low-income kids hit 58.4% 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.
Ranchos's most underrated number
58.4% 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
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 Ranchos Middle in Madera, 58.4% of low-income students met or exceeded the ELA standard in 2025, compared to 46.3% district-wide and 38.2% statewide. Ranchos Middle outperforms its district average for low-income students by 12.0 percentage points in ELA. Other subgroups: Low-Income students (32.1% Math proficient); Hispanic students (56.3% ELA proficient). The largest proficiency gap is 42.8 percentage points for disabilities students. Data source: California Department of Education, CAASPP 2024-25. 169 students tested.
7 of 16 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.
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 Liberty High, which sent 9 graduates to UC campuses last fall and teaches 14 AP subjects. Those numbers describe past cohorts — a child starting here today would reach Liberty High around 2031, and 6 years is a long time for a school to hold still, and by the state's 2023 count 70% of Liberty 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
$866 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 452 students, this school is much smaller than the typical California middle school (≈860).
On the state's science test (CAST), 32% 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 Ranchos Middle a good middle school?
What are Ranchos Middle's CAASPP test scores?
How does Ranchos Middle rank in California?
What is the attendance and school culture like at Ranchos Middle?
How does Ranchos Middle compare to other schools in Madera?
How does Ranchos Middle serve low-income and underrepresented students?
Your other options
Nearby High Schools
2 within ~3 mi · avg 45
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 7 | 240 | 23% | 42% | 21% | 15% | 65% | +17 |
| Grade 8 | 201 | 25% | 40% | 23% | 11% | 65% | +19 |
| Math | Tested | EXC | MET | NEAR | NOT | MET+ | +/CA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 6 | 0 | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Grade 7 | 241 | 17% | 25% | 38% | 20% | 42% | +8 |
| Grade 8 | 201 | 22% | 20% | 27% | 31% | 42% | +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 | 199 | 8% | 24% | 60% | 9% |
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 | 169 | 58.4% | +12 | +20 |
| Hispanic/Latino | 223 | 56.3% | +6 | +17 |
| White | 157 | 75.2% | +9 | +13 |
| School | Dist | Scope | EXC | MET+ | Grade gap | Cohort growth | Susp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ranchos Middle ← | — | 48 | 21.6% | 53.4% | — | — | 4.8% |
| California average | — | 39 | 16.8% | 39.3% | +1.5pp | — | 3.7% |
- — Growth data isn't available — the state needs matched grades across years to compute it.
| Group | 2019 | 2025 | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Female | 7.5% | 10.6% | +3.1pp |
| Male | 12.1% | 9.9% | -2.2pp |
| Asian | 0.0% | 6.5% | +6.5pp |
| Hispanic/Latino | 13.6% | 12.8% | -0.8pp |
| Students with Disabilities | 20.5% | 14.0% | -6.5pp |
| English Learners | 8.3% | 16.0% | +7.7pp |
| Socioeconomically Disadvantaged | 14.4% | 16.6% | +2.2pp |
| All Students | 10.1% | 10.2% | +0.1pp |
| Black/African American | — | 15.4% | — |
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