Whittier Elementary: The scores are below where anyone wants them. Here's what they don't tell you.
Whittier posts low test scores — and test scores are one lens among several. 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 G3 → 2025 G5) | Absence | Suspension | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| This school | 22 | 6% | 20% | Above avg · p60 | 36.7% | 3.2% |
| CA average · Elementary School | 39 | 21% | 43% | Average · p50 | 17.9% | 1.6% |
Whittier Elementary scores 22 of 100 on SchoolScope's Scope Score — the 14th 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 →
🌱 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 “20% proficient” and call it done. Whittier deserves a closer read. The school sits in Hemet, where four in five 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
Climbed from the 3rd to the 14th percentile since 2019 — past roughly 400 elementary schools.
Proficiency here is back to its pre-pandemic level — 20% meet the standard, about where the school stood in 2019.
| Grade | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 3 | 30% | 14% | 20% | 18% | 25% |
| Grade 4 | 25% | 13% | 11% | 22% | 23% |
| Grade 5 | 20% | 21% | 21% | 17% | 31% |
| Grade | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 3 | 20% | 6% | 16% | 21% | 22% |
| Grade 4 | 14% | 11% | 8% | 14% | 8% |
| Grade 5 | 9% | 5% | 8% | 8% | 12% |
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 its two subjects part company here. It puts this school around the 41st percentile of California elementary schools in reading and the 15th in math; ours, which blends the subjects, lands around the 60th. A gap that size between reading and math in one building is worth asking about directly — one year of data can't tell you whether it is the teaching, the cohort, or noise.
— 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 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 how the school follows up when a student starts missing days — chronic absence often starts outside the classroom, not inside it.
- Ask what typically leads to a suspension, and what happens before it gets there.
- Ask what changes between grade 3 and grade 5 here, and who teaches the older kids.
- 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.
How every group of students does here
At Whittier Elementary in Hemet, 26.3% of low-income students met or exceeded the ELA standard in 2025, compared to 31.9% district-wide and 38.2% statewide. Whittier Elementary trails its district average for low-income students by 5.6 percentage points in ELA. Other subgroups: Low-Income students (13.6% Math proficient); Hispanic students (28.0% ELA proficient). The largest proficiency gap is 25.4 percentage points for english learner students. Data source: California Department of Education, CAASPP 2024-25. 370 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 6.3pp from grade 3 to grade 5 at this school. District average: +3.5pp.
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.
— 4 more groups are 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 West Valley High, which sent 16 graduates to UC campuses last fall and teaches 4 AP subjects. Those numbers describe past cohorts — a child starting here today would reach West Valley High around 2035, and 10 years is a long time for a school to hold still, and by the state's 2023 count 56% of West Valley 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
$436 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 816 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), 9% 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 Whittier Elementary a good elementary school?
What are Whittier Elementary's CAASPP test scores?
How does Whittier Elementary rank in California?
Is Whittier Elementary getting better or worse?
What is the attendance and school culture like at Whittier Elementary?
How does Whittier Elementary compare to other schools in Hemet?
How does Whittier Elementary serve low-income and underrepresented students?
What middle school does Whittier Elementary feed into?
Your other options
Nearby Elementary Schools
3 within ~3 mi · avg 29
Nearby Middle Schools
3 within ~3 mi · avg 22
Nearby High Schools
2 within ~3 mi · avg 44
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 3 | 129 | 12% | 12% | 23% | 52% | 25% | −18 |
| Grade 4 | 130 | 5% | 18% | 25% | 52% | 23% | −22 |
| Grade 5 | 137 | 8% | 23% | 10% | 58% | 31% | −16 |
| Math | Tested | EXC | MET | NEAR | NOT | MET+ | +/CA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 3 | 129 | 8% | 15% | 28% | 50% | 22% | −23 |
| Grade 4 | 129 | 1% | 7% | 34% | 58% | 8% | −34 |
| Grade 5 | 137 | 4% | 7% | 22% | 66% | 12% | −23 |
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 | 137 | 1% | 8% | 53% | 38% |
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 | 370 | 26.3% | −6 | −12 |
| Hispanic/Latino | 290 | 28.0% | −4 | −11 |
| Students with Disabilities | 81 | 8.6% | +2 | −8 |
| School | Dist | Scope | EXC | MET+ | Grade gap | Cohort growth | Susp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Whittier Elementary ← | — | 22 | 6.5% | 20.2% | −2.1pp | +77 pts | 3.2% |
| Cawston Elementary | 2.7 mi | 30 | 15.2% | 33.7% | −13.7pp | — | 3.2% |
| Academy of Innovation | 1 mi | 28 | 10.3% | 31.2% | −17.4pp | — | 0.2% |
| Hemet Dual Language Academy | 2.3 mi | 28 | 13.0% | 35.3% | −12.2pp | — | 0.9% |
| California average | — | 39 | 21.4% | 42.7% | −2.9pp | — | 1.6% |
| Year | Scope | Pctile | Rank | Exc | Met+ | Absent | Susp | Grade gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 15 | 3 | #5321 | 4.0% | 19.4% | 21.5% | 3.3% | -10.3pp |
| 2022 | 12 | 2 | #5636 | 2.3% | 11.8% | 54.5% | 3.6% | +3.0pp |
| 2023 | 12 | 2 | #5579 | 2.9% | 14.2% | 48.4% | 3.9% | -3.9pp |
| 2024 | 23 | 14 | #4959 | 5.1% | 16.7% | 35.8% | 5.9% | -7.2pp |
| 2025 | 22 | 14 | #4965 | 6.5% | 20.2% | 36.7% | 3.2% | -2.1pp |
- — Low-income students here trail the state average for their group by 12 points in ELA — worth asking how the school is closing that gap.
| Group | 2019 | 2025 | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Female | 17.3% | 37.6% | +20.3pp |
| Male | 26.3% | 37.2% | +10.9pp |
| Black/African American | 30.1% | 52.7% | +22.6pp |
| Hispanic/Latino | 18.8% | 35.4% | +16.6pp |
| Two or More Races | 38.3% | 37.0% | -1.3pp |
| Students with Disabilities | 34.1% | 37.8% | +3.7pp |
| English Learners | 17.0% | 30.6% | +13.6pp |
| Foster Youth | 21.4% | 31.6% | +10.2pp |
| Homeless | 40.4% | 70.3% | +29.9pp |
| Socioeconomically Disadvantaged | 22.1% | 38.4% | +16.3pp |
| All Students | 21.9% | 37.4% | +15.5pp |
| Group | Reading | n | CDE band | Math | n | CDE band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All Students | −1 | 243 | Average | −13 | 241 | Moderate |
| Socioeconomically Disadvantaged | −1 | 229 | Average | −13 | 227 | Moderate |
| Hispanic or Latino | −2 | 176 | Average | −10 | 174 | Moderate |
| English Only | 0 | 160 | not categorised | −13 | 160 | not categorised |
| English Learner | −6 | 62 | Moderate | −9 | 61 | Moderate |
| Students with Disabilities | 0 | 54 | Average | −14 | 53 | Moderate |
| English Learners Only | −15 | 47 | not categorised | −18 | 46 | not categorised |
| Black or African American | −5 | 26 | Average | −15 | 26 | Moderate |
| White | +10 | 21 | Accelerated | −23 | 21 | Minimal |
| Recently Reclassified Fluent-English Proficient Only | +17 | 15 | not categorised | +19 | 15 | not categorised |
| Two or More Races | +8 | 13 | Accelerated | −14 | 13 | Moderate |
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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