Summary:
ZIP code 95540 has two middle schools in the Fortuna Elementary district: Toddy Thomas Middle, serving grades 5–8 with 233 students, and Fortuna Middle, serving grades 7–8 with 231 students. Their 2025–2026 all-grades results average 37% proficient in English language arts (ELA), 20% in math and 30% in science, compared with state results of 49%, 38% and 36%, respectively. Math is the clearest shared challenge: the area average is 18 percentage points below the state, the largest gap of the three subjects.
Fortuna Middle has the stronger all-grades ELA and math results, while Toddy Thomas Middle leads in science. Fortuna’s ELA result is 44%, compared with 30% at Toddy, a 14-point difference; its math result is 22%, versus 18%, a 4-point difference. Both are below state results in those subjects. In science, Toddy scores 32% and Fortuna 29%; both are below the state’s 36%. These schoolwide results do not establish a same-grade advantage: the schools serve different grade spans, and no supplied grade-level results match between them.
Recent results show improvement in ELA at both schools, but mixed movement elsewhere: from 2024–2025, ELA rose about 1 point at Toddy and 5 points at Fortuna. Toddy’s science result rose 3 points, while Fortuna’s was virtually unchanged; math was essentially flat at Toddy and rose about 1 point at Fortuna. SchoolDigger’s reported percentile ranking for Fortuna increased from 22 in 2023–2024 to 41 in 2024–2025 and stayed at 41 in 2025–2026; Toddy’s ranking was 46 in 2018–2019 and 28 in 2021–2022. In 2024–2025, the reported free/reduced lunch eligible measure was 85% at Toddy and 78% at Fortuna; student-teacher ratios were 19.8:1 and 13.1:1, respectively. These are contextual differences, not explanations for test results.
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