Summary
Mira Catalina Elementary in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, serves 366 students in kindergarten through fifth grade in the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified district. It is a strong local performer, ranking near the top of nearby schools in test results, but its scores have fallen in recent years—most sharply in science.
In 2025–2026, the school ranked second among 10 nearby schools with reported results in both English language arts and math, and third in science. Its proficiency rates were 74% in ELA, 70% in math, and 47% in science, compared with nearby-school averages of 56%, 56%, and 42%. It also exceeded state rates—49% in ELA, 38% in math, and 36% in science—but fell short of district rates of 80%, 74%, and 67%. Science is the clearest district-level weakness, 20 points below the district; math is closest, 3 points behind. Grade-level results reveal a contrast: fourth-grade math was 81%, the highest among nearby schools, while fifth-grade math was 60%, 12 points below the district and higher than only two nearby schools.
Scores have declined since 2022–2023: ELA fell from 82% to 74%, math from 83% to 70%, and science from 60% to 47%. Science had climbed to 75% in 2024–2025 before dropping 28 points the next year. Meanwhile, SchoolDigger’s statewide rating is 88th percentile and four stars, second-highest locally behind Dapplegray Elementary; the school’s overall percentile has slipped from 97 in 2023–2024. SchoolDigger’s statewide ranking for White students, a measure of how well the school serves that group, fell from the 92nd percentile to the 71st over the reported years, 17 points below the school’s overall ranking. The latest student-teacher ratio is 20.9, close to the nearby average of 21.1. The school reported 14% free/reduced lunch eligible in 2024–2025, lower than all but one nearby school with the same measure and year.
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