Summary:
Capitola’s school list has one school, New Brighton Middle, serving grades 6–8 and enrolling 585 students, so families have no other local school in this list to compare it with. Its clearest strength is science: in 2025–2026, 52% of students were proficient, 17 percentage points above California.
New Brighton Middle is strongest relative to the state in science and also performs above the state in ELA, while math is its relative weakness. Science proficiency was 52%, compared with 36% statewide and 48% in Soquel Union Elementary. ELA was 57%, 8 points above California and 2 points above the district. Math was 36%—2 points below the state and 3 below the district. Grade-level results show why the overall math score can hide differences: grade 6 was 11 points below the state, grade 7 was nearly even, and grade 8 was 7 points above. ELA was above the state in all three grades, by 6 to 9 points.
Results changed in different directions over the two reported years: ELA fell by 1 percentage point and its state advantage narrowed from 9 points to 8; math fell by 6 points, moving from 4 points above the state to 2 below; science rose by 10 points and its advantage grew from 10 points to 17. SchoolDigger ranks the school 804th of 2,703 California schools, at the 70th percentile, and awards it four stars. The student-teacher ratio was 20.9:1 in 2024–2025. In that year, 30% of students were free/reduced lunch eligible; California provides free school meals to all students, so this measure is not the same as access to meals under the statewide program.
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