Sumac Elementary

Sumac Elementary is a K-5 public school serving about 360 students in the high-performing Las Virgenes Unified district in Agoura, California, where it maintains a solid above-average statewide ranking but finds itself in the middle tier among its exceptional local neighbors.

While Sumac is a good school overall, a detailed look reveals some important differences compared to nearby schools. Most notably, its mathematics and science proficiency scores are lower than those at schools like White Oak Elementary, Willow Elementary, and Red Oak Elementary, with the gap widening in the upper grades. Sumac serves a student population with a higher level of economic need than most of these comparison schools, which is a significant factor in its performance profile. However, the school has shown a remarkable and successful focus on improving attendance, reducing chronic absenteeism to a rate lower than the district average and on par with some top-performing schools.

An interesting finding is that Sumac's academic outcomes are not simply a result of funding, as it spends more per student than some nearby higher-achieving schools in the Oak Park Unified district, such as Brookside Elementary. Furthermore, a school like Lupin Hill Elementary, which serves a very similar student population, achieves stronger academic results, indicating that school-level practices are crucial. For parents, this means Sumac is a capable school with a key strength in student engagement (attendance) but faces the ongoing challenge of translating that and its resources into higher academic achievement, particularly in STEM subjects for older students.