Summary:
Coast Unified has one middle school in this list: Santa Lucia Middle, serving grades 6–8 and enrolling 112 students. In 2025–2026, its proficiency was 37% in ELA, 27% in math and 28% in science, compared with California’s 49%, 38% and 36%, respectively. With no other middle schools in the list to compare, the key finding is that Santa Lucia scored below the state in all three subjects.
There is no separate top- or bottom-performing school here: Santa Lucia is the only school represented. Its relative bright spot was science, where it was 8 percentage points below the state, compared with shortfalls of 12 points in math and 13 in ELA. Grade-level results show different patterns by subject: ELA was 25 points below the state in grade 6 but 5 points below in grade 8; math was 3 points below in grade 6 and 17 points below in grade 8. Eighth-grade science was 8 points below the state.
Results weakened from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, with science showing the largest change: Santa Lucia’s science proficiency fell 12 points, and its gap with the state widened by 16 points, from a 7-point advantage to an 8-point deficit. ELA and math proficiency fell 4 and 2 points, while their state gaps widened by 4 and 3 points. SchoolDigger’s rating also declined, from the 58th percentile and 3 stars in 2023–2024 to the 39th percentile and 2 stars in 2025–2026. For context, the school’s student–teacher ratio was 11.5 in 2024–2025, and 88% of students were free/reduced lunch eligible that year; chronic absenteeism was 20% in 2025–2026, versus 17% in the district and 18% statewide. These figures offer context but do not establish what caused the scores.
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