Where do San Diego County schools excel, and where do they struggle? Here’s what new state data shows.
The California School Dashboard rates districts on academic performance, absenteeism, graduation rates, how well they're serving English language learners and more.
By Jemma Stephenson | The San Diego Union-Tribune and Kristen Taketa | The San Diego Union-Tribune
New state data out Thursday offer a glimpse of how well San Diego County schools are performing, and improving, on issues ranging from absenteeism to college readiness to serving English language learners.
The results for the county’s largest school district, San Diego Unified, were mostly positive. Statewide ratings improved as well, progress that California education officials chalked up to efforts including expansions of community schools, universal meals and literacy coaching.
School districts, as well as individual district and charter schools, all get their own ratings each year at caschooldashboard.org. The dashboards have been California’s main way to measure accountability for schools since their launch in 2017.
School ratings in different areas are assigned as colors, with blue the highest, followed by green, yellow, orange and red, the lowest. These ratings factor in both the performance of the current year and how that changed from the previous year, whether it improved, worsened or stayed flat.
he dashboard doesn’t give specific scores but rather assigns ratings in eight areas:
- English language arts scores, or how far from the standard students scored on either the Smarter Balanced summative assessment or California Alternate Assessment, on average.
- Math scores, or how far from the standard students scored, on average, on the same standardized tests in math.
- Science scores, or the average number of points for continuously enrolled students who took the California Science Test or the California Alternate Assessment for Science.
- College and career readiness, or the number of students deemed prepared based on having met at least one of several metrics — such as taking Advanced Placement courses, passing AP or International Baccalaureate exams, completing a career technical education pathway, completing a pre-apprenticeship or government job program, passing college credit courses or passing state standardized tests in English and math.
- English learner progress, or the percentage of students learning English as a second language who either improved or maintained high performance from last year on the state’s language proficiency test.
- High school graduation rate, including both four- and five-year graduations.
- Chronic absenteeism rate, for TK-8 students only.
The science metric is new this year, and the college and career indicator now includes Advanced Placement courses, not just exams.
San Diego Unified School District, the county’s largest district and the state’s second-largest, highlighted its improvements in six of seven of the areas from last year’s dashboard. It scored on the indicators as follows:
- English language arts — green: The district improved to a green, after getting a yellow rating last year. Students scored around 12 points above standard, up from around seven points above standard last year.
- Math — green: The district improved from a yellow score last year. On average, students scored around 19 points below standard, up from around 24 points below standard last year.
- Science — green: The district improved by 1.6 points to 56.8.
- Suspension rate — green: San Diego Unified has a relatively low suspension rate of 2.1%, which didn’t change much from last year.
- Chronic absenteeism — yellow: The district maintained its yellow score from last year but improved by around two percentage points, to 19%.
- Graduation rate — green: The district’s rate improved by roughly two percentage points, to around 90%. That helped improve its dashboard rating from orange after the rate slid last year.
- English learner progress — orange: The percentage of English learners who met the criteria for progress fell by around three points from last year, to around 46%. Last year, the district was yellow.
- College or career readiness — green: The district maintained a green score, improving its share of prepared students to two-thirds.
“Our continued progress on the California School Dashboard shows that when we center instruction, relationships and data around our student achievement goals, we see meaningful results,” Superintendent Fabi Bagula said in a statement. “While we are proud of this progress, we remain committed to closing equity gaps so that every student thrives.”
Read the entire article from the San Diego Union-Tribune: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2025/11/13/where-do-san-diego-county-schools-excel-and-where-do-they-struggle-heres-what-new-state-data-shows/