Summary:
ZIP code 96020 has two schools in Chester Elementary (grades K–6) and Chester Junior/Senior High (grades 7–12), serving 171 and 124 students, respectively, in Plumas Unified. In 2025–2026, the high school had the higher all-grades ELA result, while Elementary had the stronger math result. The clearest shared concern is science: both schools were well below the state’s 36% result, with Elementary at 19% and the high school at 21%—17 and 15 percentage points below the state.
Chester Elementary stands out in all-grades math at 40%, compared with 25% at the high school; Elementary was 2 percentage points above the state, while the high school was 13 points below. The high school had a small edge in all-grades ELA (45% versus 43%) and science (21% versus 19%), though both schools were below the state in ELA. Grade-level results show brighter spots: fourth graders at Elementary were above the state in ELA by 23 points and math by 10, and eleventh graders at the high school were above by 20 and 7 points, respectively. Eighth-grade math at the high school was 24 points below the state. Its reported graduation rate was 100%, versus 88% statewide, and its dropout rate was 0%, versus 8% statewide. Because the schools serve different grade spans, their all-grades comparisons are not same-grade comparisons.
The high school’s all-grades results improved from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026: ELA rose 14 percentage points, math 10 and science 8; Elementary’s ELA result fell from 45% to 43%, while math rose from 38% to 40%. SchoolDigger gives the high school 4 stars and Elementary 2 stars; its percentile ranking rose from 33 in 2024–2025 to 71 in 2025–2026, while Elementary’s moved from 53 to 49. The high school also had a lower student–teacher ratio (10.1 versus 22.2). For context, the 2024–2025 share reported as free/reduced lunch eligible was 37% at the high school and 48% at Elementary; these differences describe school context, not the cause of results.
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