Riverside STEM Academy: The score is strong. The trajectory is stronger.
Riverside STEM Academy pairs 75% proficiency with gains that hold up when the same students are tracked two years apart — the rare school that posts both.
| Scope | % Exceeded | % Met+ | Growth | Absence | Suspension | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| This school | 74 | 42% | 75% | +15.3 | 9.7% | 1.7% |
| CA average · Middle School | 43 | 17% | 39% | +1.5 | 18.5% | 3.7% |
Riverside STEM Academy scores 74 of 100 on SchoolScope's Scope Score — the 95th 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 →
🚀 Growth Engine — Ask how the school tracks each kid's growth year to year, and what happens when a kid stalls instead of gaining.
Most rating sites would stop at “75% proficient” and call it done. Riverside STEM Academy deserves a closer read. The school sits in Riverside, where more than half of students qualify for free or reduced lunch — and reading the numbers without that context misreads the school.
Riverside STEM Academy's low-income kids hit 75.0% 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
Has held the 95th-percentile line every tested year since 2019.
This school hasn't fully recovered from the pandemic: 75% meet the standard today, versus 93% in 2019 — a gap worth asking about on a visit.
| Grade | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 5 | 90% | 77% | 77% | 68% | 89% |
| Grade 6 | 94% | 77% | 73% | 77% | 69% |
| Grade 7 | 96% | 93% | 90% | 85% | 74% |
| Grade 8 | 93% | 94% | 93% | 95% | 89% |
| Grade 11 | 100% | 100% | 100% | 96% | 100% |
| Grade | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 5 | 88% | 62% | 69% | 62% | 78% |
| Grade 6 | 88% | 83% | 77% | 72% | 75% |
| Grade 7 | 85% | 83% | 83% | 82% | 61% |
| Grade 8 | 98% | 94% | 90% | 85% | 86% |
| Grade 11 | 92% | 96% | 91% | 78% | 100% |
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 rises 9.8pp across grades; the floor rises 19.6pp. The state average falls 0.5pp 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.
Riverside STEM Academy's most underrated number
75.0% 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 what changed — new curriculum, new principal, new program. Momentum has a cause, and a visit will find it.
- 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 Riverside STEM Academy in Riverside, 75.0% of low-income students met or exceeded the ELA standard in 2025, compared to 40.8% district-wide and 38.2% statewide. Riverside STEM Academy outperforms its district average for low-income students by 34.2 percentage points in ELA. Other subgroups: Low-Income students (69.3% Math proficient); Hispanic students (74.0% ELA proficient). The largest proficiency gap is 6.1 percentage points for hispanic students. Data source: California Department of Education, CAASPP 2024-25. 264 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 20.9pp from grade 6 to grade 8 at this school. District average: -2.5pp.
Showing up, and staying in class
Grades 4–6 students miss school at roughly one and a half times the rate of Grades 7–8 students (11.4% vs 6.7%). Chronic absence here concentrates in the upper grades.
Where the path goes
Riverside STEM Academy serves grades 5-12 — students can complete middle and high school here, without a separate middle-to-high transition.
The people teaching here
Pay is set by the district, not the school.
What gets spent here
$26 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), 81% met or exceeded the standard — science is tested in grades 5 and 8 but never enters the Scope Score.
Frequently asked questions
Is Riverside STEM Academy a good middle school?
What are Riverside STEM Academy's CAASPP test scores?
How does Riverside STEM Academy rank in California?
Is Riverside STEM Academy getting better or worse?
What is the attendance and school culture like at Riverside STEM Academy?
How does Riverside STEM Academy compare to other schools in Riverside?
How does Riverside STEM Academy serve low-income and underrepresented students?
Your other options
Nearby Elementary Schools
3 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 peer comparisons.
| ELA | Tested | EXC | MET | NEAR | NOT | MET+ | +/CA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 5 | 103 | 48% | 42% | 8% | 3% | 89% | +41 |
| Grade 6 | 103 | 36% | 33% | 20% | 11% | 69% | +22 |
| Grade 7 | 100 | 25% | 49% | 22% | 4% | 74% | +26 |
| Grade 8 | 105 | 46% | 43% | 10% | 2% | 89% | +42 |
| Grade 11 | 57 | 88% | 12% | 0% | 0% | 100% | +53 |
| Math | Tested | EXC | MET | NEAR | NOT | MET+ | +/CA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 5 | 103 | 55% | 22% | 18% | 4% | 78% | +42 |
| Grade 6 | 103 | 46% | 29% | 17% | 9% | 75% | +40 |
| Grade 7 | 100 | 35% | 26% | 31% | 8% | 61% | +27 |
| Grade 8 | 105 | 64% | 22% | 10% | 5% | 86% | +53 |
| Grade 11 | 57 | 74% | 26% | 0% | 0% | 100% | +77 |
| Science (CAST) | Tested | EXC | MET | NEAR | NOT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 5/8/11 | 265 | 45% | 37% | 18% | 0% |
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 | 264 | 75.0% | +34 | +37 |
| Hispanic/Latino | 235 | 74.0% | +32 | +35 |
| White | 95 | 89.5% | +26 | +28 |
| School | Dist | Scope | EXC | MET+ | Growth | Susp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Riverside STEM Academy ← | — | 74 | 41.9% | 75.5% | +15.3 | 1.7% |
| California average | — | 43 | 16.8% | 39.3% | +1.5 | 3.7% |
| Year | Scope | Pctile | Rank | Exc | Met+ | Absent | Susp | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 88 | 99 | #6 | 60.3% | 92.5% | 3.9% | 2.7% | +4.6pp |
| 2022 | 95 | 99 | #2 | 57.2% | 87.4% | 9.5% | 3.6% | +13.9pp |
| 2023 | 95 | 99 | #3 | 56.1% | 84.5% | 10.1% | 4.3% | +16.3pp |
| 2024 | 86 | 99 | #21 | 49.0% | 82.8% | 7.7% | 4.3% | +15.3pp |
| 2025 | 74 | 95 | #103 | 41.9% | 75.5% | 9.7% | 1.7% | +15.3pp |
- — Scored here as a middle school — other grade spans appear in the data appendix.
| Group | 2019 | 2025 | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Female | 6.3% | 10.5% | +4.2pp |
| Male | 1.8% | 8.5% | +6.7pp |
| Asian | 4.0% | 5.6% | +1.6pp |
| Black/African American | 2.0% | 8.3% | +6.3pp |
| White | 0.0% | 0.0% | +0.0pp |
| Hispanic/Latino | 3.9% | 10.3% | +6.4pp |
| Two or More Races | 4.5% | 9.1% | +4.6pp |
| Students with Disabilities | 23.1% | 22.2% | -0.9pp |
| Socioeconomically Disadvantaged | 3.7% | 10.5% | +6.8pp |
| All Students | 3.8% | 9.3% | +5.5pp |
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