Schools in Zip Code 96117

Zip code 96117 has one listed school, Shaffer Elementary, serving kindergarten through eighth grade with 246 students. In 2025–2026, its all-grade proficiency was 36% in English Language Arts (ELA), 16% in math and 25% in science; California’s results were 49%, 38% and 36%, respectively. The school was below the state in all three subjects, and math stands out as its biggest shortfall: 22 percentage points below California.

Because Shaffer is the only school in the area list, it is both the sole representative and cannot be ranked against local peers. Within the school, third-grade ELA is a bright spot: 47% were proficient, about 3 points above the state result. The contrast across grades is sharp, especially in math: Shaffer’s results ranged from 3% in sixth grade to 26% in fifth grade, while its ELA results ranged from 17% in sixth grade to 47% in third. Math was below the state in every reported grade, so its all-grade gap is not limited to a single grade.

Results changed unevenly from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026: Shaffer gained 3 points in ELA and 9 in science, while math fell 10 points. ELA’s gap with the state narrowed by 2 points and science’s by 6, but the math gap widened by 11 points. SchoolDigger ranked Shaffer at the 28th percentile with 1 star in 2025–2026, up from the 26th percentile the year before but below its 42nd-percentile, 2-star listing in 2023–2024. As context, the school had a student–teacher ratio of 23.4 in 2024–2025 and 61% of students were free/reduced lunch eligible that year; these figures describe the school, not the cause of its results.