Emerald Elementary School

Vancouver, WA · Grades ?–5

Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA

Neighborhood

Decoded Rank

All factors combined

Bottom 30% decoded

#309 of 430

plausibly #177–416

Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA schools

Below Expected

#1257 in WA

Achievement Rank

Raw test performance

Middle 40% achievement

#245 of 430

Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA schools

#725 in WA

places from achievement to Decoded Rank

This school performs roughly as expected for its context.

Data confidence:Medium459 students tested 2 years100% participation

Confidence is computed from sample size, year coverage, and participation rate. Higher confidence means the rank shift is stable across years and not driven by a single small cohort.

  • Tested students: total students with valid scores across all reported years.
  • Years of data: number of school years included. More years smooths year-to-year noise.
  • Participation: share of enrolled students who took the assessment. Low participation can bias scores.

What's driving this rank

Decoded Rank: #309 of 430

in Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA schools

Raw test scores rank this school #245, but families here have higher-than-average income and educational attainment, so the expected score is also high. After accounting for context, this school performs about as predicted — the Decoded Rank is #309.

Each component below is scored on a 0–100 within-metro scale. A qualitative band summarizes where the school lands.

  • LowPerforms above what its context predictsCounts for 35% of the rank

    After accounting for income and demographics, does this school beat what the data would predict?

  • Above averageStudents gain ground year over yearCounts for 30% of the rank

    Are kids at this school learning faster than typical for the metro?

  • LowEquity within the schoolCounts for 15% of the rank

    Are students clustered at similar levels, or split between top and bottom?

  • StrongDirection over recent yearsCounts for 10% of the rank

    Is this school's Decoded Rank trending up or down across the years we have data for?

  • StrongMost students were testedCounts for 10% of the rank

    Was the rank computed against a representative share of the school's students?

Show the numbersFor the methodology-curious

Each component is converted to a 0–100 within-metro percentile (100 = top of the metro). "Contribution" is the percentile-points the component adds to (or subtracts from) the metro median before the schools are re-ranked into the composite.

Per-component contributions to this school's Decoded Rank composite. Weight is the share each component carries; percentile is the school's within-metro score on that component.
ComponentWeightPercentileContribution
Performs above what its context predicts 35%13-12.9
Students gain ground year over year 30%61+3.4
Equity within the school 15%11-5.8
Direction over recent years 10%100+5.0
Most students were tested 10%100+5.0

How the Decoded Rank composite is computed

Why trust this?
  • Public data sources
  • Context-adjusted model
  • Confidence shown
  • Methodology published

This score uses state assessment data, NCES enrollment data, and Census ACS 5-year neighborhood data. The Decoded Rank adjusts for school context — student demographics, ELL/SPED service rates, and the socioeconomic profile of the surrounding tract — and shows how the school performs relative to expectation, not in absolute terms.

SchoolDecoder is one signal, not a verdict. Decoded Rank is a context-adjusted residual, not a causal claim about teaching quality. See full methodology →

All Rankings

How this school ranks across the metro, state, and among demographic peers.

ScopeAchievementDecodedShift
Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA (430 schools)#245#309
WA (1503 schools)#725#1257
Among similar schools (6 peers)#3#3

Resource context

School inputs, not ranking points

These fields describe the school and surrounding neighborhood. They help readers interpret the page, but this is not a dollar-by-dollar or ratio-by-ratio scorecard and the fields here are not components of the Decoded Rank.

Enrollment
460
Free/reduced-price lunch
42.4%
Student-teacher ratio
15.3:1
Locale
City, midsize
School type
Regular public school
Enrollment model
Neighborhood attendance area
Neighborhood median income
$130,250ACS tract proxy
Neighborhood poverty
0.0%ACS tract proxy
SES index
76.2
Assessment data year
2024
CCD year
2023
ACS vintage
2020-2024

Within Evergreen School District (Clark): #12 of 28.Middle quintile in district. View district

Performance Spread

How students are distributed across the four state-assessment proficiency levels — L1: below standard, L2: approaching, L3: meets (proficient), L4: exceeds. This describes the shape of results at the school, not their height.

Students at this school are broadly spread across proficiency levels.

  • Level 1 — Below standard31%
  • Level 2 — Approaching standard24%
  • Level 3 — Meets standard (proficient)24%
  • Level 4 — Exceeds standard22%

Performance Spread measures how evenly students are distributed across the L1..L4 proficiency ladder, treating the levels as an ordered scale (L1=1, L2=2, L3=3, L4=4) and weighting each by its student share. A school where most students cluster at one level has a TIGHT spread; a school split between the bottom and top has a WIDE or BIMODAL spread. Bimodal fires only when BOTH tails are non-trivial AND the middle is relatively hollow (pct_L1 ≥ 15, pct_L4 ≥ 25, pct_L2 + pct_L3 ≤ 60). It describes shape — NOT how high the school's scores are. Methodology

Nearby Schools

Sorted by distance. Both rank columns shown so you can compare quickly.

SchoolAchievementDecodedShiftStoryConfidence
Burnt Bridge Creek Elementary Sch#315#271High
Pacific Middle School#316#415Medium
Harmony Elementary School#253#279High
Open Doors Evergreen Rankings coming soon.
Evergreen High School Rankings coming soon.

Similar Schools

Schools with comparable demographics, income, and size. Both rank columns shown for direct comparison.

SchoolAchievementDecodedShiftStoryConfidence
Ridgecrest Elementary#347#560High
Phantom Lake Elementary#198#225High
Sunnyside Elementary#333#461High
Thurgood Marshall Elementary#131#119High
Bowman Creek Elementary#246#343Medium

Historical Ranks

Year-by-year decoded and achievement ranks. Pandemic-affected years are excluded — we don't interpolate scores across the gap.

YearAchievementDecodedShift
2024#245#309
2023#315#291

Note: assessment transitions (where a state changes its test) are footnoted on the methodology page; trends are not computed across breakpoints.

Trajectory

2023: percentile 22024: percentile 13

Trending up

Based on 2 years (2023–2024).

Slope: +11.6 pct/yr (no CI — too few years)

Low confidence

How this works: we fit a linear trend across the available years of Decoded percentile, then bucket the slope into a direction. Wide confidence intervals (uncertain trends) collapse to Holding steady. See the methodology page for thresholds.

Cohort Progression

Kids who started 3rd grade here in 2023 gained 26 proficiency points by 4th grade — gaining while the typical metro school declined.

Cohort-to-cohort variance is high — interpret the headline cautiously.

Learning rate: +9.6 proficiency points/yr (95% CI -26.9 to 46.0)

Low confidence

Cohort 20232024 Slope
ELA · started 5th in 2023
G5
206
ELA · started 4th in 2023
G4
227
G5
216
-10.5
ELA · started 3rd in 2023
G3
232
G4
258
+26.0
ELA · started 3rd in 2024
G3
240
Math · started 5th in 2023
G5
151
Math · started 4th in 2023
G4
235
G5
218
-17.9
Math · started 3rd in 2023
G3
211
G4
258
+46.9
Math · started 3rd in 2024
G3
235

How this works: we follow each grade-cohort across years through the school (3rd graders in 2023 are 4th graders in 2024, etc.) and fit a linear slope on a 100–400 proficiency-points scale built from the state assessment's four levels (L1=1, L2=2, L3=3, L4=4, weighted by student share). This is the same construction Stanford SEDA uses (edopportunity.org/methods); it's not student-level tracking — we measure the school's cohort, not individuals. See the methodology page for thresholds.

Evidence & technical detailClick to expand

School Alpha

School Alpha is the residual between actual and expected performance once school context is held constant. It is a context-adjusted estimate, not a causal claim about teaching quality.

Shrunk Alpha (95% CI)
-0.60 (95% CI: -0.65 to -0.56)

SES index components

SES method
Blended SES index (ACS + FRL)
SES index value
76.2
FRL %
42.4%
ELL %
19.1% · WA OSPI Report Card Enrollment
SPED %
17.4% · WA OSPI Report Card Enrollment
Tract median income (ACS 5-year)
$130,250
Tract poverty rate
0.0%
Tract % bachelor's+
30.3%

What "Decoded Rank" means

Decoded Rank converts School Alpha — the context-adjusted residual — into a parent-facing rank within the metro pool. A higher Decoded Rank than Achievement Rank means the school's raw scores understate its performance once neighborhood and school context are held constant. The reverse means raw scores overstate it. The rank is one signal, not a verdict.

Data & sources

Assessment data
2023–24 school year
NCES CCD vintage
2023
Census ACS 5-year vintage
2020-2024
Last updated
July 26, 2026
Methodology version
0.9.0

Cross-state metro note: This metro spans state lines. Both states use Smarter Balanced assessments with a common scale for grades 3–8 ELA/math. Context-adjusted ranks are computed within each state's testing context, then aggregated across the metro.

Source files (3)

SchoolDecoder publishes context-adjusted residuals, not causal estimates. Decoded Rank is one signal — not a verdict on teaching quality. Read about limitations →