Best Public Schools in Miranda, CA

Miranda has three schools in Southern Humboldt Joint Unified, serving grades K–12 across an alternative school, a junior high, and a high school, with 307 students combined. Results vary substantially by school and subject, while chronic absenteeism is high throughout: it ranges from 38% at South Fork High to 46% at Osprey Learning Center (Alternative), compared with 18% statewide. The clearest shared academic concern is math: all three schools have 2025–2026 proficiency of about 17% to 18%, roughly 20 to 22 percentage points below the state’s 38%.

South Fork High stands out in all-grades ELA, with 59% proficiency—10 points above the state and 39 points above Miranda Junior High, at 21%. Osprey’s 50% is also close to the state’s 49%. South Fork also leads in reported science, at 38% versus Junior High’s 12%; Osprey’s science result is suppressed. Junior High has the lowest reported all-grades results in ELA, science, and math; its math proficiency is 17%, compared with 18% at each of the other schools. South Fork’s 11th-grade results are mixed: ELA is 2 points above the state, while math is 14 points below. Its graduation rate, however, is 93%, compared with 88% statewide.

Recent gains are strongest at South Fork: from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, its proficiency rose 36 points in ELA, 9 in math, and 33 in science. Junior High’s ELA rose 6 points, but math fell 4 and science fell 5. SchoolDigger’s 2025–2026 ranking places South Fork at the 55th percentile with three stars, versus Junior High at the 14th percentile with one star; South Fork’s ranking improved from the 18th percentile the prior year, while Junior High has remained at one star for three years. Student-teacher ratios were similar at South Fork and Junior High—14.5 and 14.4—and do not mirror their different results. Both report free/reduced lunch eligible figures for 2024–2025: 65% at South Fork and 77% at Junior High; Osprey reports 73% for 2021–2022, a different year. These figures provide context, not an explanation for performance. Because the schools serve different grade spans and Osprey enrolls only 8 students, all-grades comparisons are not fully like-for-like.