Summary
Hamilton Elementary in Hamilton City, California, serves grades K–8 and enrolls 393 students, amid a group of nearby schools with widely varying test results. In 2025–26, 28% of students were proficient in English language arts (ELA), 18% in math and 14% in science, compared with California rates of 49%, 38% and 36%. The eight nearby schools with results averaged 51% in ELA, 43% in math and 38% in science. Hamilton ranked second-lowest among those schools in ELA and lowest in math and science. The most important finding is that proficiency is low across all three subjects, not just one.
There are some differences by grade, but the strongest relative result does not overturn the broader pattern. Third-grade math proficiency was 41%, well above Hamilton’s all-grades rate of 18%, though below the average of 55% at nearby schools with grade-level results; fifth-grade math was especially low at 6%, compared with 37% statewide. ELA results were below nearby schools in each of grades 3–5, and grade 7 was Hamilton’s strongest ELA grade at 40%. Compared with Hamilton Unified, the school was about 4 points lower in ELA, 1 point lower in math and 3 points lower in science. Two favorable measures are its 18.1 students per teacher in 2024–25, the lowest ratio among the nearby schools with reported data, and 6% chronic absenteeism in 2025–26, below the district’s 8% and California’s 18%. Its free/reduced lunch eligible rate was 91% in 2024–25, higher than at nearby schools reporting that measure.
Results have changed unevenly: from 2022–23 to 2025–26, ELA rose from 18% to 28%, narrowing the gap with the state by 8 points. Math rose from 13% to 18%, but its state gap improved by only 1 point; science rose from 13% to 14% while the state rate climbed from 30% to 36%, widening the gap by 5 points. SchoolDigger ranked Hamilton at the 12th percentile with 1 star in 2025–26, unchanged from the prior year and down from the 18th percentile in 2023–24. One notable subgroup result is the 74th-percentile SchoolDigger ranking for effectiveness for English Language Learner students in 2023–24, compared with the school’s overall 18th-percentile ranking that year; this subgroup result is older than the latest overall ranking.
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