Smarter Balanced + WCAS, SY 2024-25
All grades, all students. % Met or Exceeded Standard.English Language Arts
87.2%
State avg 58.4%
District avg 68.9%
County avg 66.7%
+85.0pp since 2014-15
Mathematics
67.9%
State avg 51.2%
District avg 61.1%
County avg 61.4%
Science
45.1%
State avg 52.2%
District avg 61.2%
County avg 59.4%
What this means: On the Smarter Balanced + WCAS, Washington's statewide test, about 87 of every 100 students at this school read and write at grade level, about 68 of 100 do math at grade level, and about 45 of 100 are at grade level in science. Across all Washington schools, those numbers are about 58, 51, and 52. Reading and writing scores are up about 85 points since 2014.
BeatsExpectations
Demographically-adjusted score · methodologyTier
UNDERPERFORMING
Bottom 10% of WA schools after controlling for student poverty
Actual proficiency
60.3%
composite math + reading, all grades
Predicted
71.7%
based on WA schools with similar FRL share
Beats by
-11.3pp
below demographic expectation
What this means: About 60% of students here test proficient in math and reading, below the roughly 72% typical for Washington 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 →What is Smarter Balanced + WCAS?
Washington public-school students in grades 3 through 8 plus grade 10 take the Smarter Balanced (SBAC) assessments in English Language Arts and Math each spring. The Washington Comprehensive Assessment of Science (WCAS) is given at grades 5, 8, and 11.
What does "% Met or Exceeded Standard" mean?
It is the percentage of students at the school whose scores were rated Level 3 or Level 4 on the test. Smarter Balanced reports four performance levels; Level 3 ("Met Standard") and Level 4 ("Exceeded Standard") signal the student is performing at grade level or above. A higher number is better.
What does 87.2% mean for English Language Arts at Ballard High School?
It means about 87.2 percent of students tested at Ballard High School performed at grade level or above on the Smarter Balanced + WCAS English Language Arts test in 2024-25. The statewide average for Washington that year was 58.4%. 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 Washington, 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?
Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), Report Card Assessment Data on data.wa.gov. Smarter Balanced (SBAC) ELA + Math (grades 3-8 + 10/11), Washington Comprehensive Assessment of Science (WCAS) at grades 5, 8, 11. Headline metric is the cumulative Level 3 + Level 4 rate (Smarter Balanced "Met or Exceeded Standard").
How often is it updated?
Smarter Balanced + WCAS 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.
