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Test scores

Ortega Elementary · Pacifica, CA
See how it ranks: all California schools by score · San Mateo County schools by score

CAASPP Smarter Balanced, SY 2024-25

All grades, all students. % met or exceeded standard.
English Language Arts
50.9%
State avg 49.1%
District avg 54.5%
County avg 59.6%
-2.1pp since 2014-15
Math
56.3%
State avg 37.7%
District avg 51.7%
County avg 52.6%
+2.3pp since 2014-15

What this means: On the CAASPP Smarter Balanced, California's statewide test, about 51 of every 100 students at this school read and write at grade level and about 56 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 2 points since 2014, while math scores are up about 2 points.

Rank: Ortega Elementary places #1,626 of 5,151 California elementary schools, and #56 of 96 in San Mateo County for state test proficiency.

BeatsExpectations

Demographically-adjusted score · methodology
Tier
UNDERPERFORMING
Bottom 10% of CA schools after controlling for student poverty
Actual proficiency
51.4%
composite math + reading, all grades
Predicted
71.6%
based on CA schools with similar FRL share
Beats by
-20.2pp
below demographic expectation

What this means: About 51% of students here test proficient in math and reading, below the roughly 72% 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 343.6%44.5%5559.3%46.8%54
Grade 454.1%46.0%6259.0%42.7%61
Grade 554.2%49.1%5950.9%36.5%59

Performance levels, SY 2024-25

Share of tested students at each CAASPP Smarter Balanced level.

English Language Arts

GradeStandard ExceededStandard MetStandard Nearly MetStandard Not Met
All grades30.3%20.6%20.6%28.6%
Grade 327.3%16.4%18.2%38.2%
Grade 436.1%18.0%19.7%26.2%
Grade 527.1%27.1%23.7%22.0%

Math

GradeStandard ExceededStandard MetStandard Nearly MetStandard Not Met
All grades27.6%28.7%17.8%25.9%
Grade 327.8%31.5%7.4%33.3%
Grade 427.9%31.1%18.0%22.9%
Grade 527.1%23.7%27.1%22.0%

Each tested student counts in exactly one level, so each row adds to about 100%. The headline met or exceeded standard rate is the sum of the top two levels.

10-year history

All grades, all students. Ortega   California avg

English Language Arts

44532014-1548572015-1649472016-1750592017-1851662018-1949532020-2147472021-2247502022-2347462023-2449512024-25
YearSchoolDistrictCountyState
SY 2024-2550.9%54.5%59.6%49.1%
SY 2023-2446.1%53.6%59.1%47.1%
SY 2022-2350.0%53.4%59.3%46.7%
SY 2021-2246.6%53.4%60.0%47.1%
SY 2020-2153.2%54.8%61.9%49.0%
SY 2018-1965.7%60.1%62.8%51.1%
SY 2017-1858.9%59.9%62.3%49.9%
SY 2016-1747.2%58.3%61.4%48.6%
SY 2015-1657.0%57.3%61.1%48.1%
SY 2014-1553.0%56.2%58.2%44.0%

Math

34542014-1537502015-1638532016-1739612017-1840672018-1934502020-2133552021-2235572022-2336522023-2438562024-25
YearSchoolDistrictCountyState
SY 2024-2556.3%51.7%52.6%37.7%
SY 2023-2452.2%53.6%51.5%35.6%
SY 2022-2357.1%53.6%51.4%34.6%
SY 2021-2254.5%51.9%50.6%33.4%
SY 2020-2150.0%46.8%53.6%33.7%
SY 2018-1967.3%56.8%54.8%39.8%
SY 2017-1861.5%57.8%54.7%38.7%
SY 2016-1753.0%54.0%54.0%37.6%
SY 2015-1650.0%49.1%53.3%36.7%
SY 2014-1554.0%50.8%50.8%33.6%

Recent discussions

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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 50.9% mean for English Language Arts at Ortega Elementary?
It means about 50.9 percent of students tested at Ortega Elementary 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.

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