Bay Area dominates best California elementary schools ranking

A good chunk of California’s best public elementary schools all come from the Bay Area, according to new rankings released Tuesday by US News & World Report.

Six Bay Area schools are in the top 10, with many of them specifically in the San Jose area, home to Silicon Valley giants like Apple, Google and Meta.

At ranking No. 3 was Murdock-Portal Elementary, a K–5 school with more than 500 students in San Jose. (That actually was two steps down from the No. 1 ranking it held last year.)

Bay Area schools also dominated next five spots on the list.

In order, the schools were William Faria Elementary in Cupertino, North Star Academy in Redwood City, Herbert Hoover Elementary in Palo Alto, Covington Elementary in Los Altos and Bullis Charter School, also in Los Altos.

Such high rankings are not surprising for the Silicon Valley area, with its predictable mix of hyper-concentrated wealth, a highly educated parent population and fierce cultural focus on college preparation.

But the results stand in contrast to statewide testing outcomes published this month, which show students at many California schools struggling with reading proficiency and basic math.

Just a few miles away from Silicon Valley, San Mateo Park Elementary had the lowest scores of any regular school in California: Just five of the 140 students who took the English test met state standards last year, or 3.6%, along with 5% in math.

Across the San Mateo-Foster City School District, only about half of students met the standard in each subject.

Covington Elementary, which has 600 students, saw the biggest improvement in state rankings from last year, when it was ranked No. 29.

The top two spots, however, went to a Sacramento-area school and a SoCal school. Atop the list was Buckeye Union Mandarin Immersion Charter in El Dorado Hills, and second was Cold Spring Elementary in Santa Barbara.

US News does not rank elementary and middle schools nationally; its methodology for each state’s best schools uses students’ mathematics and reading proficiency. Half of the formula assessed just the scores and the other half incorporated the test results within the context of socioeconomic demographics.

The rankings are meant to give parents an idea of where they can best place their children.

“It’s difficult for parents to figure out how good the schools their kids are in are, if they’re thinking about choosing a neighborhood to live in based on schools,” Steve Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, told US News & World Report.

“What information could they use? Often, they don’t have anything but reputation, which doesn’t tell you about what the school contributes.”

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