In this report I describe patterns and trends in the academic performance of California public school students, using data from state-administered standardized tests in grades 3-8 from 2009 through 2025.
The first section of the report compares trends in academic performance in California to trends in the U.S. as a whole. Although average academic performance in California has historically lagged that of the nation, test scores in California grew faster than the national average from 2003-2019 and have declined less than the U.S. as a whole from 2019-2024. Nonetheless, California students’ academic skills are, on average, still slightly lower than the national average.
The second section of the report compares academic performance across student economic, racial/ethnic, and gender subgroups. The test scores of economically advantaged, Asian, and White students in California have grown, on average, faster than those of economically disadvantaged, Hispanic, and Black students. In addition, the test scores of female students have declined more since 2019 than boys’ scores.
The third section of the report describes the variation in academic performance across California’s districts and schools. Academic skills vary substantially across school districts, ranging from more than three grade levels below the national average in some school districts to more than three grade levels above in others. In general, academic performance is higher in larger, suburban, and more affluent school districts than smaller, rural, and lower-income districts.
The fourth section of the report examines the trends in academic achievement in high- and low-income school districts from 2009 to 2025. These trends show that math skills have improved over the last 16 years in affluent school districts but have declined in low-income districts, leading to a substantially larger between district disparity today than in 2009. In reading, however, trends in academic performance have been largely similar in high- and low-income districts over this period.
The report concludes with some discussion of the implications of these patterns and trends.
In reading this report, it is important to keep in mind that academic performance is not just the result of what happens in schools but reflects all the educational opportunities students have had throughout their lives. When average test scores are higher in some years, districts, or student subgroups than others, those differences are the result of differences in the set of educational opportunities available to different sets of California students. These educational opportunity differences may be due to differences in school resources and effectiveness, to be sure, but they may also be due to differences in children’s early childhood experiences, the resources and opportunities their families are able to pay for and provide, the quality of child care and preschool programs available, and the influences of other out-of-school experiences.
