Summary
General Shafter Elementary in Bakersfield, California, serves kindergarten through eighth grade and enrolls 169 students—far fewer than nearby schools, which enroll 496 to 1,151. Its 2025–2026 results were below state levels in English language arts (ELA), math and science. The clearest concern is science: just 14% of students met the standard, the lowest result among 10 nearby schools.
Compared with nearby schools, the school was around the middle in ELA and math but much weaker in science: ELA was 45%, 2 percentage points above the nearby average of 43%, and ranked sixth of 10; math was 32%, 2 points above the average of 30%, and ranked fourth. Science was 14%, 13 points below the nearby average of 27%. All three subjects were below California results—ELA by 4 points, math by 7 and science by 22. The reported figures for the school and the General Shafter Elementary district are identical in every subject, so the district comparison is not an independent benchmark. Fourth grade is a notable dip: ELA and math were each 23%, compared with state results of 46% and 42%, respectively.
Over time, ELA has risen from 42% in 2022–2023 to 45% in 2025–2026, while math ended at 32%, where it began, after reaching 46% in 2024–2025; science also swung sharply, falling 25 points from the prior year to 14%. SchoolDigger ranked the school at the 36th percentile with 2 stars in 2025–2026, down from the 64th percentile and 3 stars the year before. Its student-teacher ratio was 16.9 in 2024–2025, the lowest among nearby schools, while 89% of students were free/reduced lunch eligible that year. SchoolDigger’s ranking for Low Socio Economic Status Students fell from the 78th to the 15th percentile; its ranking for Hispanic Students fell from the 68th to the 23rd percentile, compared with the schoolwide 36th percentile. Chronic absenteeism improved substantially, declining from 45% in 2021–2022 to 7% in 2025–2026, below the state’s 18%. Because enrollment is small, grade-level results may be sensitive to the number of students in each cohort.
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