Summary
Carmel Valley Middle serves 697 students in grades 7–8 in San Diego, within the San Dieguito Union High district. Its latest supplied test results show a high-performing school, with proficiency above California’s in English, math, and science. The most important takeaway is that Carmel Valley is among the top two of the three nearby schools serving only grades 7–8 in every subject, although Pacific Trails leads it in all three.
Math is Carmel Valley’s clearest strength against nearby schools and the district; ELA is its relative soft spot. In 2025–2026, 82% of students were proficient in math, 43 points above the state and 11 points above the district; the school also beat the three nearby grade 7–8 schools’ 71% average by 11 points. Science proficiency was 72%, 36 points above the state and 7 above the district, and 8 points higher than the nearby schools’ average of 64%. ELA proficiency was 80%, 30 points above the state but just 0.2 points below the district. It was only 1 point above the nearby schools’ 79% average and below Pacific Trails. Those comparisons show strong results across the board, with the largest local advantage in math.
Results over time are mixed: from 2022–2023 to 2025–2026, ELA fell 2 points, math rose by less than 1 point, and science rose 3 points, while the school’s advantage over the state narrowed in all three subjects. SchoolDigger ranks Carmel Valley at the 97th percentile, 5 stars, and 70th out of 2,703 schools—still a high standing, though below its 99th-percentile results in 2021–2022 through 2023–2024. Its chronic absenteeism was 6% in 2025–2026, 5 points below the district and 12 below the state. The 2024–2025 student-teacher ratio was 23.5, near the middle of the local range; 15% of students were reported as free/reduced lunch eligible that year. One notable subgroup difference in SchoolDigger’s measure of how well the school serves students: its Asian Students ranking was at the 78th percentile in 2025–2026, down from the 95th percentile in 2023–2024, compared with the school’s overall 97th percentile.
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