Summary:
Palm Springs Unified has 27 schools: 16 elementary, five middle, five high, and one alternative school. Results vary substantially even among schools serving the same grade levels: for example, grade-5 math proficiency ranges from 47% at Cielo Vista Charter to 4% at Julius Corsini Elementary. The clearest overall concern is that high-school math and science results are well below state levels, while school-to-school differences are large.
Several schools stand out, though leaders are not always close to the state results. Palm Springs High leads high schools in ELA at 57%, compared with 19% at Mt. San Jacinto High; its result is above the state’s 49%. Cathedral City High leads high-school math at 21%, but that is below the state’s 38%. Among middle schools, James Workman Middle leads ELA and math, while Raymond Cree Middle leads science. At grade 5, Cielo Vista leads ELA and math, and Rio Vista Elementary leads science at 39%, above the state’s 35%. Most group averages, especially for math and science, remain below state results.
Recent changes are mixed rather than consistent: across the 27 schools, average change was about 1 percentage point in ELA, essentially flat in math, and about 1 point in science. Rio Vista science rose 19 points, while Sunny Sands Elementary fell 14 points. SchoolDigger’s ranking percentile rose 14 points for Rio Vista from 2023–2024 to 2025–2026, while Vista del Monte Elementary fell 22 points; these are rankings, not test-score changes. Similar enrollment and income measures do not guarantee similar results: Sunny Sands and Two Bunch Palms Elementary had 93% free/reduced lunch eligible in sy 2024–2025, yet their grade-5 ELA results were 52% and 24%. Their student-teacher ratios were similar, at 20.9 and 19.8.
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