Summary:
Chester, California, has two schools serving kindergarten through grade 12: Chester Elementary (K–6) and Chester Junior/Senior High (grades 7–12), with 295 students combined and no middle school. In 2025–26, the schools’ simple average proficiency was 44% in ELA, 33% in math and 20% in science, below California’s 49%, 38% and 36%. The clearest shared concern is science: results were 19% at the elementary school and 21% at the high school, respectively 17 and 15 percentage points below the state.
The high school leads in all-grade ELA and science, but only narrowly: its results are 45% in ELA and 21% in science, versus 43% and 19% at the elementary school. The elementary school stands out in math at 40%, 15 points above the high school’s 25%; its result is also 2 points above the state, while the high school is 13 points below. Strengths vary by grade: fourth grade at the elementary school exceeds state results in ELA and math, as does 11th grade at the high school. The high school also reports a 100% graduation rate and 0% dropout rate, despite all three all-grade test results being below state levels.
Results improved overall between 2024–25 and 2025–26, though not at both schools in every subject: the high school rose 14 points in ELA, 10 in math and 8 in science, while elementary ELA fell 3 points and its math and science rose 2 and 1 points. SchoolDigger’s latest statewide rankings give the high school the 71st percentile and 4 stars, compared with the elementary school’s 49th percentile and 2 stars. For context, the 2024–25 student–teacher ratios were 10.1 at the high school and 22.2 at the elementary school; both report free/reduced lunch eligible for 2024–25, at 37% and 48%, respectively. These figures describe differences between the schools but do not explain their results.
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