Gold Oak Union Elementary

Gold Oak Union Elementary has two schools serving kindergarten through grade 8: Gold Oak Elementary (K–5) and Pleasant Valley Middle (grades 6–8). In 2024–2025, they enrolled 270 and 117 students, respectively. Their grade spans do not overlap, so their all-grades results are not same-grade comparisons. The main area-wide concern is that both schools scored below the state in all three 2025–2026 subjects, with the average math result 15 points below the state, compared with 11 points in ELA and 13 in science.

Pleasant Valley Middle had the higher 2025–2026 all-grades results in each subject, though the school-to-school differences were modest: 2 points in ELA, 1 in math and 3 in science. Both schools remained below the state: in math, for example, Gold Oak Elementary was 16 points below and Pleasant Valley was 14 points below. Absenteeism tells a different story: Gold Oak’s chronic absenteeism was 18%, slightly below the state’s 18%, while Pleasant Valley’s was 29%, 10 points above. So higher test results at Pleasant Valley did not coincide with lower absenteeism.

Results changed differently by school and subject. From 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, Pleasant Valley improved 15 points in ELA and 10 in math; Gold Oak’s ELA was essentially unchanged and its math fell 3 points. Science moved in opposite directions: Pleasant Valley rose 18 points, while Gold Oak fell 18. SchoolDigger’s latest ranking also favors Pleasant Valley: it rose to the 37th percentile from the 12th, while Gold Oak fell to the 28th from the 38th in 2024–2025 (and was at the 44th percentile in 2023–2024). These are relative rankings, not proficiency scores. As context, in 2024–2025, 40% of Gold Oak students and 36% of Pleasant Valley students were free/reduced lunch eligible; student-teacher ratios were 19.2 and 14.5, respectively. These measures describe the schools, not the cause of their results.