William Sheppard Middle: No single number tells this school's story. Here's the honest picture.
William Sheppard posts 26% meeting the standard and 8.4% exceeding it, against 39% and 16.8% statewide. The gaps and the bright spots below are the real read.
| Scope | % Exceeded | % Met+ | Growth (2023 G6 → 2025 G8) | Absence | Suspension | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| This school | 27 | 8% | 26% | Below avg · p46 | 15.4% | 6.1% |
| CA average · Middle School | 38 | 17% | 39% | Average · p50 | 18.5% | 3.7% |
William Sheppard Middle scores 27 of 100 on SchoolScope's Scope Score — the 31st 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 “26% proficient” and call it done. William Sheppard deserves a closer read. The school sits in San Jose, where two-thirds of students qualify for free or reduced lunch — and reading the numbers without that context misreads the school.
The seven-year arc
Slipped from the 44th to the 31st percentile since 2019.
This school hasn't fully recovered from the pandemic: 26% meet the standard today, versus 36% in 2019 — a gap worth asking about on a visit.
| Grade | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 6 | 47% | 24% | 22% | 28% | 32% |
| Grade 7 | 38% | 35% | 25% | 25% | 31% |
| Grade 8 | 41% | 41% | 27% | 30% | 36% |
| Grade | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 6 | 40% | 17% | 26% | 18% | 22% |
| Grade 7 | 20% | 12% | 15% | 16% | 18% |
| Grade 8 | 28% | 18% | 14% | 15% | 20% |
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 falls 2.5pp across grades; the floor rises 3.7pp. The state average rises 0.1pp over the same span. A school visit and conversation with teachers will tell you more than this number.
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. The two measures land in the same neighbourhood here — ours puts this school around the 46th percentile of California middle schools, the state's around the 31st in reading and math together. Two different methods agreeing is the most you can ask of one year of test data.
— 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 the school is working on next. Strong numbers tell you where a school is, not where it's going.
- 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 William Sheppard Middle in San Jose, 26.2% of low-income students met or exceeded the ELA standard in 2025, compared to 23.8% district-wide and 38.2% statewide. William Sheppard Middle outperforms its district average for low-income students by 2.4 percentage points in ELA. Other subgroups: Low-Income students (14.5% Math proficient); Hispanic students (21.7% ELA proficient). The largest proficiency gap is 28.4 percentage points for english learner students. Data source: California Department of Education, CAASPP 2024-25. 328 students tested.
6 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 0.2pp from grade 6 to grade 8 at this school. District average: +2.8pp.
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 people teaching here
Pay is set by the district, not the school.
What gets spent here
$375 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 451 students, this school is much smaller than the typical California middle school (≈860).
On the state's science test (CAST), 19% 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 William Sheppard Middle a good middle school?
What are William Sheppard Middle's CAASPP test scores?
How does William Sheppard Middle rank in California?
Is William Sheppard Middle getting better or worse?
What is the attendance and school culture like at William Sheppard Middle?
How does William Sheppard Middle compare to other schools in San Jose?
How does William Sheppard Middle serve low-income and underrepresented students?
Your other options
Nearby Middle Schools
3 within ~3 mi · avg 63
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 | 140 | 9% | 24% | 26% | 41% | 32% | −14 |
| Grade 7 | 156 | 8% | 23% | 29% | 40% | 31% | −17 |
| Grade 8 | 148 | 6% | 30% | 29% | 35% | 36% | −10 |
| Math | Tested | EXC | MET | NEAR | NOT | MET+ | +/CA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade 6 | 145 | 12% | 10% | 22% | 56% | 22% | −12 |
| Grade 7 | 160 | 8% | 10% | 34% | 49% | 18% | −16 |
| Grade 8 | 147 | 9% | 12% | 22% | 57% | 20% | −12 |
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 | 147 | 3% | 16% | 61% | 20% |
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 | 328 | 26.2% | +2 | −12 |
| Hispanic/Latino | 263 | 21.7% | −1 | −17 |
| Asian | 109 | 57.8% | −0 | −17 |
| School | Dist | Scope | EXC | MET+ | Grade gap | Cohort growth | Susp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| William Sheppard Middle ← | — | 27 | 8.4% | 26.4% | +1.0pp | +43 pts | 6.1% |
| KIPP Heartwood Academy | 2.5 mi | 67 | 43.7% | 67.6% | +4.5pp | — | 1.0% |
| Sierramont Middle | 2.1 mi | 67 | 39.6% | 67.0% | +2.0pp | — | 1.0% |
| Piedmont Middle | 1.1 mi | 54 | 27.1% | 51.8% | −1.0pp | — | 2.9% |
| California average | — | 38 | 16.8% | 39.3% | +1.5pp | — | 3.7% |
| Year | Scope | Pctile | Rank | Exc | Met+ | Absent | Susp | Grade gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 32 | 44 | #1126 | 11.4% | 35.8% | 11.3% | 2.5% | -9.2pp |
| 2022 | 25 | 33 | #1447 | 6.9% | 24.6% | 5.7% | 8.7% | +8.8pp |
| 2023 | 22 | 29 | #1547 | 5.8% | 21.3% | 15.8% | 5.5% | -3.2pp |
| 2024 | 27 | 29 | #1566 | 6.7% | 22.2% | 23.1% | 3.7% | -0.4pp |
| 2025 | 27 | 31 | #1537 | 8.4% | 26.4% | 15.4% | 6.1% | +1.0pp |
- — 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 | 11.7% | 17.9% | +6.2pp |
| Male | 10.9% | 12.6% | +1.7pp |
| Asian | 2.8% | 3.5% | +0.7pp |
| White | 2.1% | 12.0% | +9.9pp |
| Hispanic/Latino | 16.7% | 18.7% | +2.0pp |
| Pacific Islander | 9.1% | — | — |
| Students with Disabilities | 22.6% | 26.7% | +4.1pp |
| English Learners | 12.3% | 21.5% | +9.2pp |
| Socioeconomically Disadvantaged | 12.6% | 17.3% | +4.7pp |
| All Students | 11.3% | 15.3% | +4.0pp |
| Two or More Races | — | 36.4% | — |
| Homeless | — | 57.1% | — |
| Group | Reading | n | CDE band | Math | n | CDE band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All Students | −2 | 404 | Average | −8 | 404 | Moderate |
| Socioeconomically Disadvantaged | −4 | 297 | Average | −11 | 297 | Moderate |
| Hispanic or Latino | −5 | 242 | Average | −18 | 242 | Moderate |
| English Learner | −8 | 169 | Moderate | −12 | 169 | Moderate |
| English Only | −9 | 133 | not categorised | −13 | 133 | not categorised |
| Asian | +3 | 98 | Average | +13 | 98 | Accelerated |
| Recently Reclassified Fluent-English Proficient Only | −2 | 96 | not categorised | −12 | 96 | not categorised |
| English Learners Only | −16 | 73 | not categorised | −9 | 73 | not categorised |
| Long-Term English Learner (grades 6-8 only) | −10 | 47 | Moderate | −22 | 47 | Minimal |
| Filipino | −7 | 45 | Moderate | −4 | 45 | Average |
| Students with Disabilities | −16 | 33 | Moderate | −12 | 33 | 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. “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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