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Gunderson High
Test scores
CAASPP 2024-25 . % met or exceeded standardWhat this means: On the CAASPP, California's statewide test, about 37 of every 100 students at this school read and write at grade level and about 16 of 100 do math at grade level. Across all California schools, those numbers are about 49 and 38. Reading and writing scores are down about 11 points since 2014, while math scores are down about 1 points.
BeatsExpectations
Demographically-adjusted score · methodologyWhat this means: About 30% of students here test proficient in math and reading, below the roughly 48% 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.
7-year change
SY 2017-18 vs SY 2024-25About Gunderson High
Gunderson High is one of the middle-of-the-pack four-year high schools in San Jose, California, operated by San Jose Unified, with 744 students on its rolls from grades 9 through 12.
Gunderson High is one of 41 schools operated by San Jose Unified, a district that serves 24,322 students overall.
Demographically, Gunderson High lists that 68% of the student body identifies as Hispanic. The remainder comes out to 11% White, 10% Asian, 6% multiracial, 5% Black. The wider county runs roughly 25% Hispanic, putting the school's mix considerably more Hispanic than the area baseline.
On the resource side, The school lists 45 full-time-equivalent teachers, for a student-teacher ratio near 16.6:1. That figure is tighter than the state norm's 18.2:1 average. An estimated 55% of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, often used as a Title I proxy. Set against Santa Clara County (around 37%), the school's rate is north of typical.
Adjusting for the school's free-and-reduced-lunch share, Gunderson High is in the bottom 10% of California public schools. The BeatsExpectations model predicts schools with this FRL share to land around 47.6%; Gunderson High posts 29.8%, -17.8 points below that line.
In the surrounding community, ACS estimates for Santa Clara County put median household earnings sit near $164,281, 57% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and the poverty rate sits near 4%. In all, Santa Clara County runs 412 public schools (combined enrollment of about 230,059 students), of which Gunderson High is one.
Nearest neighbor: Liberty Alternative, around 0.6 miles off. 8 of the 8 nearest public schools sit inside a five-mile radius. Ranking that nearby cluster on reported proficiency puts Gunderson High at 5th of 7; the average score across the group is 33.4%.
Gunderson High operates from a downtown location.
Trend over the last 7 years. Looking back 7 years, enrollment at Gunderson High has declined 33%, going from 1,108 students in 2018 to 744 in 2025. Hispanic enrollment moved from 63% to 68% across the same window. Class-load math has tightened: from 20.0:1 in 2018 to 16.6:1 in 2025.
On this page, the feed for Gunderson High typically covers science fair prep, picture-day reminders, and bus-route questions. Anyone with firsthand experience at this school can post or comment.
Santa Clara County at a glance
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