Best Public Schools in Wasco, CA

The Wasco-area list includes 10 schools—six elementary, two middle and two high schools—serving students from elementary grades through high school. In 2025–2026, the unweighted average across the schools was 35% proficient in ELA, 19% in math and 19% in science, compared with state figures of 49%, 38% and 36%. Only Wasco High exceeded the state in all-grades ELA; all 10 schools were below it in math and science. The most important takeaway is that results vary substantially by school and subject, rather than following one area-wide pattern.

The leaders differ by subject, as do the schools at the bottom. Wasco High led all-grades ELA at 64%, 20 points above the next school, John L. Prueitt Elementary, at 44%; Wasco Independence High was lowest at 19%. Teresa Burke Elementary led math at 34%, 3 points above James A. Forrest Elementary; Independence had 0%. Semitropic Elementary led science at 33%, 9 points above Burke, while Karl F. Clemens Elementary was lowest at 7%. Grade-level results add nuance: Pond Elementary led third-grade ELA at 59%, 15 points above the state, and Semitropic’s eighth-grade science result was 38%, above the state’s 35%.

Recent changes are mixed: the ELA school average rose 1 point from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, while math was essentially flat, up 0 points when rounded; science rose 5 points, largely because Semitropic went from 0% to 33%. Excluding Semitropic, the other schools’ science average rose 1 point, less than the state’s 3-point increase. SchoolDigger ranked Wasco High in the 52nd percentile and Semitropic in the 1st in 2025–2026; Pond rose from the 19th to the 35th percentile over three years. As context, schools reported free/reduced lunch eligible shares for 2024–2025, ranging from 61% at Semitropic to 96% at Independence; among the K–5 schools, shares were relatively close, from 89% to 96%, while student–teacher ratios ranged from 20.1 at Burke to 24.0 at Forrest. Because all-grades results combine different grade spans, grade-level figures are useful for closer comparisons where available.