Summary:
The Contra Costa County Office of Education has two small high schools: Golden Gate Community, serving grades 6–12 with 69 students, and Mt. McKinley, serving grades 7–12 with 42 students. The latest reported results show sharply different outcomes: Mt. McKinley stands out for attendance, while Golden Gate Community’s reported test scores are very low. The clearest academic concern is that Golden Gate Community recorded 0% proficiency in all-grades ELA, math, and science in 2025–2026, compared with state results of 49%, 38%, and 36%, respectively.
Mt. McKinley stands out on the reported non-test outcomes: its chronic absenteeism rate was 0%, compared with 68% at Golden Gate Community. Its graduation rate was 50%, 13 percentage points above Golden Gate Community’s 38%; its dropout rate was 18%, 32 points below Golden Gate Community’s 50%. Still, both graduation rates were well below the state’s 88%. For 2025–2026 test results, Golden Gate Community had the lowest reported numeric all-grades scores, at 0% in each subject; Mt. McKinley’s results were state-suppressed, so there is no numeric comparison for that year.
Golden Gate Community’s scores did not improve across the two years with comparable results: ELA fell from 10% in 2024–2025 to 0%, science fell from 4% to 0%, and math remained at 0%, while state results rose in all three subjects. SchoolDigger ranked Golden Gate Community in the 1st percentile in 2025–2026, down from the 3rd percentile in 2023–2024. Context differs too: in 2024–2025, free/reduced lunch eligible students were 81% at Golden Gate Community and 93% at Mt. McKinley; student-teacher ratios were 9.7 and 8.4, respectively. These figures describe school differences, not reasons for the outcomes. With small enrollments and several test results suppressed, comparisons should be treated cautiously.
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