California students are improving on statewide standardized tests. And on Monday the federal government recognized a bunch of California schools with Blue Ribbons. Twenty-three public schools and one private school from California got the award (list below).

Berkeley High School gets a state rank of 4 (on a scale of 1-10 where 1 the best possible score) and it gets a GreatSchools.org rank of 5 out of 10, where 10 is the best possible score. It was not rated by SchoolDigger.com. (Berkeley Unified School District/Flickr).
To qualify they had to either be in the top rank by statewide standards, or have a student body made up of at least 40 percent disadvantaged students and show great progress on statewide standardized tests.
But if your local school is not a ribbon winner, is it still doing well? Or falling down on the job?
California tracks a welter of data on individual schools, and this month the state put it all into this website.
You can enter the name of a school, and out pops two pages of charts and graphs showing how its current numbers compare to its numbers in recent years, as well as how it compares to its school district and to the state as a whole.
Besides performance on standardized tests, the website shows the ethnic makeup of the school, the percentage "socioeconomically disadvantaged," average class sizes, the number of English language learners and other key numbers.
You can get some of the same data for the whole country from some independent websites, including GreatSchools.org or from SchoolDigger.com, both of which also offer reviews from users and give schools their own overall rankings.
Here are the California public schools that won Blue Ribbons:
|
County |
District |
School |
|
Alameda |
Fremont Unified |
J. Haley DurhamElementary |
|
Alameda |
Fremont Unified |
William Hopkins Junior High |
|
Los Angeles |
ABC Unified |
Joe A. Gonsalves Elementary |
|
Los Angeles |
Arcadia Unified |
Baldwin Stocker Elementary |
|
Los Angeles |
Bonita Unified |
Arma J. Shull Elementary |
|
Los Angeles |
Glendale Unified |
Anderson W. Clark Magnet High |
|
Los Angeles |
Los Angeles Unified |
Clover Avenue Elementary |
|
Los Angeles |
Newhall |
Stevenson Ranch Elementary |
|
Orange |
Fullerton Joint Union High |
Sunny Hills High |
|
Orange |
Los Alamitos Unified |
Sharon Christa McAuliffe Middle |
|
Orange |
Orange Unified |
Fairhaven Elementary |
|
San Bernardino |
Redlands Unified |
Judson and Brown Elementary |
|
San Diego |
San Diego Unified |
San Diego International Studies |
|
San Francisco |
San Francisco Unified |
Alice Fong Yu Alternative School |
|
San Francisco |
San Francisco Unified |
Lowell High |
|
San Luis Obispo |
San Luis Coastal Unified |
Teach Elementary |
|
San Mateo |
Redwood City Elementary |
North Star Academy |
|
San Mateo |
Woodside Elementary |
Woodside Elementary |
|
Santa Clara |
Cupertino Union |
R. I. Meyerholz Elementary |
|
Santa Clara |
Los Altos Elementary |
Oak Avenue Elementary |
|
Santa Clara |
Palo Alto Unified |
Herbert Hoover Elementary |
|
Santa Clara |
Santa Clara Unified |
Millikin Elementary |
|
Ventura |
Ventura Unified |
Foothill Technology High |
And here is the private school:
|
Contra Costa |
El Cerrito |
Tehiyah Day School |

