According to CalMatters Housing, California's K-12 schools are showing modest improvements in student test scores, though the momentum has clearly slowed compared to the post-pandemic recovery we saw a few years back. Math proficiency edged up just over a percentage point to about thirty-eight and a half percent of students, while English language arts rose by half a percentage point to just under fifty percent. Science scores performed a bit better, climbing by more than three percentage points. The State Board of Education president described this as slow but steady progress, noting there's still significant work ahead.
The state also released some interesting enrollment and demographic data this year. Overall K-12 enrollment has continued its decade-long decline, dropping to five point seven million students statewide. This matters to local districts because California funds schools based on daily attendance, so fewer students means less money in the budget. At the same time, there's been a notable shift in student populations, with the number of students identified as having disabilities jumping substantially over the past ten years while the number of English learners has dropped significantly.
One thing worth noting is that chronic absenteeism, which spiked to alarming levels during and right after the pandemic, has improved considerably though it's still higher than pre-pandemic levels. The data also flagged some concerning patterns among certain groups of students. White and Asian students are actually scoring lower now than they did back in 2019 before the pandemic shut everything down, which tells us the recovery hasn't been even across all populations.
The state graduation rate numbers got some attention because a couple of charter schools, particularly one Sacramento school serving adults, had such low graduation rates relative to their huge enrollment that they were skewing the statewide numbers. When you look at graduation rates with those schools excluded, California hit its highest rate in decades at nearly ninety percent. The State Board believes future improvements in reading and literacy scores will come as several new state education initiatives take full effect over the next few years.
What I am seeing locally in the Bay Area and East Bay is that these statewide trends are playing out in our communities too. The combination of declining enrollment, slowing academic gains, and persistent absenteeism challenges means many of our districts are having to do more with less, which inevitably affects property values and family migration patterns in our region. For buyers and sellers, understanding these education dynamics matters because they directly influence where families want to live and what they're willing to pay.
