High Schools in Hamilton Unified

The two high schools in Hamilton Unified serve grades 9–12 and 10–12: Hamilton High enrolls 306 students, while Ella Barkley High enrolls 9. In 2025–26, Hamilton’s all-grades English Language Arts/Literacy (ELA) proficiency was 50%, about 1 percentage point above the state and 18 points above the district; its math and science rates were 16 and 14 points below the state. The most important academic takeaway is that Hamilton’s results are much stronger in ELA than in math and science.

Hamilton High stands out for completion and attendance: its 2025–26 graduation rate was 98%, 10 points above the state, and chronic absenteeism was 7%, 12 points below the state. Its all-grades ELA result was also near the state rate, while math and science proficiency were 22% each. Ella Barkley High stands out for the opposite attendance result: 85% chronic absenteeism, 78 percentage points above Hamilton’s, and 66 points above the state. Ella’s test scores are suppressed, so the available results cannot show which school performs better academically.

Hamilton’s results changed unevenly from 2024–25 to 2025–26: science proficiency rose 6 percentage points, ELA fell 1 point, and math was essentially unchanged. Compared with state trends, Hamilton narrowed its gap in ELA by 2 points and science by 3, but widened its math gap by 1. SchoolDigger placed Hamilton at the 44th percentile with 2 stars in 2025–26; its percentile ranking was 43rd in 2023–24 and 45th in 2024–25. In 2024–25, the reported free/reduced lunch eligible shares were 68% at Hamilton and 67% at Ella. Ella’s smaller enrollment is paired with a lower student–teacher ratio (7.5 versus 15.7) and higher reported per-student spending ($66,871 versus $23,537), but these figures alone do not establish academic advantage. Ella’s SchoolDigger rank history is from 2010–11 to 2012–13, not recent years.