Summary
Downtown Elementary serves 317 students in grades K–8 in Bakersfield, where nearby schools generally have much lower reported test results. Its chronic absenteeism was just 3% in 2025–2026, compared with 18% in both Bakersfield City and California. The most important finding is that Downtown had the highest reported proficiency among nearby schools in all three tested subjects.
Downtown was well ahead of the state and district in ELA, math and science in 2025–2026. Proficiency was 64% in ELA, 54% in math and 57% in science, compared with state results of 49%, 38% and 36%, respectively, and district results of 31%, 16% and 19%. It also exceeded nearby-school averages by 39 points in ELA, 39 in math and 42 in science. Science is its strongest relative result; ELA is the weakest, though still substantially above comparison results. Grade-level results have some exceptions: sixth-grade ELA was 45%, 3 points below the state, and eighth-grade math was 35%, 1 point below. By contrast, seventh-grade ELA reached 82%.
Results changed unevenly over time: from 2022–2023 to 2025–2026, ELA fell 10 points, math was nearly flat, and science rose 4 points; the school’s lead over the state narrowed most in ELA. SchoolDigger ranked Downtown 1,239 of 5,804 California schools, at the 79th percentile with four stars, compared with the district’s 11th-percentile, one-star ranking. Its 2024–2025 student-teacher ratio was 21.6, tied for highest among nearby schools with reported ratios, and its reported low-income measure was 31% free/reduced lunch eligible. California is marked as a state where all students receive free school meals; that does not change what Downtown’s reported eligibility measure represents. SchoolDigger’s 2025–2026 ranking for “White Students” was at the 63rd percentile, 16 points below the school’s overall percentile, after falling from the 87th percentile the prior year—a notable difference in how well the school serves that group according to this ranking.
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