Summary
Berkeley Arts Magnet at Whittier is a 407-student K–5 school in Berkeley, served by the Berkeley Unified district. Its strongest distinction is consistently high performance across all three tested subjects, with science standing out most.
Compared with nearby K–5 schools, the school ranked third of 10 in ELA, fourth in math, and highest in science among schools with reported results. Its proficiency was 78% in ELA, 76% in math, and 75% in science—about 6, 5, and 13 percentage points above nearby-school averages, respectively. It also exceeded district results by about 6 points in ELA, 9 in math, and 17 in science, and state results by about 29, 38, and 39 points. Grade-level results reveal a softer spot: fifth-grade ELA was 86%, the highest among nearby schools, while fourth-grade ELA was 72% and third-grade math was 71%. Nearby Ruth Acty Elementary and Marin Elementary had lower chronic absenteeism rates, though Berkeley Arts Magnet’s 6% was below the district’s 13% and the state’s 18%.
Results have improved most clearly in science: from 2022–2023 to 2025–2026, science rose 15 percentage points and math rose 3, while ELA remained nearly level. Science has eased from its 2024–2025 peak, falling 6 points in the latest year. SchoolDigger ranked the school 357th of 5,804 California schools, at the 94th percentile with 5 stars; the district ranked 98th of 968, at the 90th percentile with 4 stars. In 2024–2025, the student–teacher ratio was 21.4:1, close to the nearby-school average of 21.8:1, and 29.2% of students were free/reduced lunch eligible, close to the peer average of 29.0%. SchoolDigger’s statewide percentile for its measure of how well the school serves “Multi-racial Students” rose from 62 in 2023–2024 to 96 in 2025–2026, while the overall percentile moved from 93 to 94.
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