Summary:
The 12 schools serving 92869 include seven elementary schools, one middle school, one high school and three alternative schools, with enrollment ranging from 27 to 1,795 students. The unweighted school averages are above state results in ELA, math and science, but school scores vary widely: the reported high-to-low ranges are 51 percentage points in ELA, 62 in math and 50 in science. The most important finding is that the ZIP-wide averages hide very different results from one school to another.
McPherson Magnet leads ELA at 74%, 24 points above the state, while Orange County Classical Academy (OCCA) leads math at 62% and science at 66%—24 and 30 points above state results, respectively. At the lower end, OUSD Home School has 0% proficiency in math and 23% in ELA; its science result is suppressed, not zero. Prospect Elementary has the lowest elementary ELA result at 34%, and Esplanade Elementary has the lowest science result at 16%.
Recent changes favor science and math more than ELA: across schools with both years of results, average science rose 7 points and math rose 2, while ELA fell 1; the state’s science and math results also rose, while its ELA increase was under 1 point. Individual schools moved in opposite directions: OUSD EDGE Virtual Academy gained 4 points in ELA, 12 in math and 12 in science, while Prospect fell 9, 5 and 5 points, respectively. SchoolDigger’s rankings rose at Esplanade, from the 24th to the 38th percentile, and fell at Prospect, from the 50th to the 30th. The reported free/reduced lunch eligible measure for 2024–2025 was 95% at Esplanade and 80% at Prospect, compared with 42% at McPherson and 37% at Chapman Hills Elementary; these figures provide context, not an explanation for scores. Ratios also do not track results neatly: Prospect’s student-teacher ratio is 23.0, below McPherson’s 25.7 and Chapman Hills’ 27.2, despite their stronger scores.
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