The bulletin board for America's public schools. Parents, teachers, students, and staff. One community per school.

Test scores

Gifford C. Cole Middle · Lancaster, CA
See how it ranks: all California schools by score · Los Angeles County schools by score

CAASPP Smarter Balanced, SY 2024-25

All grades, all students. % met or exceeded standard.
English Language Arts
23.5%
State avg 49.1%
District avg 22.6%
County avg 51.3%
+4.5pp since 2014-15
Math
7.3%
State avg 37.7%
District avg 15.0%
County avg 40.5%
-2.7pp since 2014-15

What this means: On the CAASPP Smarter Balanced, California's statewide test, about 23 of every 100 students at this school read and write at grade level and about 7 of 100 do math at grade level. Across all California schools, those numbers are about 49 and 38. Reading and writing scores are up about 4 points since 2014, while math scores are down about 3 points.

BeatsExpectations

Demographically-adjusted score · methodology
Tier
UNDERPERFORMING
Bottom 10% of CA schools after controlling for student poverty
Actual proficiency
16.1%
composite math + reading, all grades
Predicted
31.5%
based on CA schools with similar FRL share
Beats by
-15.3pp
below demographic expectation

What this means: About 16% of students here test proficient in math and reading, below the roughly 31% typical for California schools with a similar share of low-income students. BeatsExpectations compares each school with others at the same poverty level, not by raw scores, so a school lands here when its results trail those comparable schools, which is not the same as having low scores. A higher-scoring school can still fall in this tier if similar schools score higher still.

BeatsExpectations runs a per-state regression of proficiency on free/reduced-lunch share, then scores each school by residual. How this is calculated →

By grade, SY 2024-25

School score vs state average per tested grade.
GradeEnglish Language ArtsMath
SchoolStaten testedSchoolStaten tested
Grade 721.0%49.9%3118.5%36.4%307
Grade 825.8%48.0%3336.3%34.3%333

10-year history

All grades, all students. Gifford C. Cole   California avg

English Language Arts

44192014-1548252015-1649262016-1750212017-1851242018-1947272021-2247242022-2347252023-2449232024-25
YearSchoolDistrictCountyState
SY 2024-2523.5%22.6%51.3%49.1%
SY 2023-2425.5%21.1%48.8%47.1%
SY 2022-2323.6%21.4%47.9%46.7%
SY 2021-2226.7%22.6%47.9%47.1%
SY 2020-21N/AN/A49.3%49.0%
SY 2018-1923.9%27.5%51.1%51.1%
SY 2017-1821.0%24.7%49.6%49.9%
SY 2016-1725.9%23.0%47.7%48.6%
SY 2015-1625.0%23.0%46.9%48.1%
SY 2014-1519.0%18.7%42.0%44.0%

Math

34102014-1537122015-163872016-173942017-184072018-193372021-223582022-233682023-243872024-25
YearSchoolDistrictCountyState
SY 2024-257.3%15.0%40.5%37.7%
SY 2023-248.4%14.4%37.8%35.6%
SY 2022-237.9%12.5%36.0%34.6%
SY 2021-227.5%11.2%34.1%33.4%
SY 2020-21N/AN/A32.6%33.7%
SY 2018-197.5%15.3%40.2%39.8%
SY 2017-184.2%13.6%38.5%38.7%
SY 2016-176.7%14.1%36.8%37.6%
SY 2015-1612.0%15.5%35.3%36.7%
SY 2014-1510.0%12.5%31.5%33.6%

Recent discussions

From the Gifford C. Cole Middle community.

See all discussions at Gifford C. Cole Middle →

How to read these scores

What is CAASPP Smarter Balanced?
CAASPP (the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress) is California's annual statewide test. Public-school students in grades 3 through 8 and grade 11 take the Smarter Balanced Summative Assessments in English Language Arts and Math each spring.
What does "% met or exceeded standard" mean?
It is the percentage of students at the school whose scores were rated "Standard Met" or "Standard Exceeded" on the test. Those are the top two of four performance levels, and they signal the student is performing at grade level or above. A higher number is better.
What does 23.5% mean for English Language Arts at Gifford C. Cole Middle?
It means about 23.5 percent of students tested at Gifford C. Cole Middle performed at grade level or above on the CAASPP Smarter Balanced English Language Arts test in 2024-25. The statewide average for California that year was 49.1%. The other students fell into the lower performance levels.
How is the state average calculated?
It is a weighted average, not a simple average of each school's number. We multiply each public school's score by how many of its students tested, add those together for all schools in California, and divide by the total students tested that year. This way a big school with 1,500 students counts more than a small school with 50 students, which is the right way to ask "how did the typical student do this year?". District and county averages on this page use the same method, just scoped to that district or county.
Where does this data come from?
California Department of Education, CAASPP Smarter Balanced Summative Assessment. School-level "All Students" subgroup. Scores suppressed for groups under 11 students.
How often is it updated?
CAASPP Smarter Balanced is administered once a year (spring). Results are released by the state in the summer or early fall. We refresh this page after each annual release.

← Back to Gifford C. Cole Middle