Summary:
ZIP code 92530 has two middle schools—Terra Cotta Middle and Elsinore Middle—both serving grades 6–8 in the Lake Elsinore Unified area. In 2025–2026, Elsinore led Terra Cotta in ELA (38% vs. 27%), math (23% vs. 13%) and science (29% vs. 20%), while both schools remained below state rates. The clearest shared concern is math: even Elsinore was 15 percentage points below the state, and Terra Cotta was 25 points below.
Elsinore Middle stands out at the top on current results, and its lead holds across every reported grade and subject. Its 2025–2026 SchoolDigger rating was 2 stars at the 36th percentile; Terra Cotta Middle was rated 1 star at the 13th percentile. Terra Cotta’s biggest grade-level gap was in grade 6 ELA, where it trailed Elsinore by 18 percentage points. Science is the schools’ closest area relative to state results: Elsinore was 7 points below the state in science, compared with 12 in ELA and 15 in math.
Recent progress also favors Elsinore in ELA and science, though not math. From 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, its ELA rose 5 points and science 8 points; Terra Cotta’s scores were nearly flat in ELA and science, while its math fell 2 points. Across both schools, the state gap narrowed by 3 points in ELA and 1 in science, but widened by 2 in math. SchoolDigger’s three-year percentile ranking rose from 30th to 36th for Elsinore, while Terra Cotta’s fell from 33rd to 13th. For context, 2024–2025 student-teacher ratios were 26.7 at Elsinore and 24.4 at Terra Cotta; free/reduced lunch eligible shares were 81% and 85%, respectively. These measures describe differences between schools, not reasons for their results.
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