Summary:
Seven San Diego Unified schools serve ZIP code 92139: five elementary schools, one middle school, and San Diego SCPA, which serves grades 6–12. Their latest results show substantial differences across schools and subjects; on average, the seven schools scored below state results in English language arts (ELA), math, and science. The most important takeaway is that a ZIP-code average hides a wide spread in school results, especially in ELA and math.
Zamorano Elementary leads the latest all-grade results in all three subjects: 56% in ELA, 47% in math, and 33% in science. Its advantage over the lowest-scoring school is 30 percentage points in ELA, 34 points in math, and 13 points in science. At the other end, Bell Middle has the lowest ELA and math results, at 27% and 13%; Paradise Hills Elementary has the lowest science result, at 19%. Penn Elementary stands out by grade: fourth graders scored 65% in ELA, 19 points above the state, and 52% in math, 9 points above. Results are not uniformly strong, even among top performers: Zamorano’s science result is 3 points below the state.
Across the seven schools, average ELA results fell 4 points from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, while math rose 1 point and science fell 2 points. The average gap from the state widened in ELA and science but stayed about the same in math. Individual results offer useful contrasts: Perry Elementary improved in all three subjects, while Pacific View Leadership Elementary had notable declines in ELA and science. SchoolDigger’s statewide ranking percentile also fell from the 85th to the 55th for San Diego SCPA between 2023–2024 and 2025–2026. As context, 2024–2025 free/reduced lunch eligible shares at the elementary schools ranged from 71% at Zamorano to 81% at Penn; student-teacher ratios ranged from 21.8 at Perry to 26.3 at Pacific View. These measures accompany varied results and do not explain them.
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