Summary
John W. North High is a large public high school in Riverside, California, serving grades 9–12 and 2,011 students in the Riverside Unified area. Its 2025–26 graduation rate was 96%—about 1 point below the district and 8 points above the state—while its dropout rate was 2%, compared with 8% statewide. Chronic absenteeism, however, was 23%, higher than the district’s 17% and the state’s 18%. The key takeaway is that strong graduation outcomes coexist with below-benchmark test results and elevated absenteeism.
English language arts is North’s strongest tested subject relative to district and state benchmarks, while math is its clearest academic weakness. In 2025–26, 46% of students were proficient in ELA, compared with 47% in the district and 49% statewide; science proficiency was 22%, versus 32% and 36%; and math was 15%, versus 34% and 38%. Locally, North ranked sixth of nine nearby schools in both ELA and math, and fifth of eight in science, so it is not among the area’s top performers in any subject. Its ELA results are closest to the district and state, while the math gaps are widest.
Scores have not shown sustained gains over the four years reported: from 2022–23 to 2025–26, ELA fell by 1 percentage point, math by 2, and science rose by 2; over the same endpoints, the gap with the state widened by 4 points in ELA, 5 in math, and 4 in science. SchoolDigger placed North in the 36th percentile with 2 stars in 2025–26, down 12 percentile points from the prior year. Its student-teacher ratio was 22.7 in 2024–25, close to the nearby-school average of 21. North’s 2024–25 free/reduced lunch eligible measure was 88%, compared with a nearby average of 77%. One notable SchoolDigger statewide subgroup result: its ranking for how well it serves Asian students was at the 22nd percentile in 2024–25, versus the school’s overall 48th percentile, and had fallen from the 58th percentile in 2022–23.
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