Washington Connections Academy Goldendale
Goldendale, WA · Grades K–12
NeighborhoodDecoded Rank
All factors combined
WA statewide rating — the rank below is this school's statewide position
Bottom 30% decoded
#1159 of 1502
plausibly #987–1288
Washington schools
#45 · rural Washington
Achievement Rank
Raw test performance
Bottom 30% achievement
#1055 of 1502
Washington schools
#39 · rural Washington
Lower by Both Measures
Scores look modest, and students tend to slip relative to peers the longer they are enrolled.
Data confidence:Medium1309 students tested 3 years89% 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: #1159 of 1502
in Washington schools
Raw test scores rank this school #1055, 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 #1159.
Each component below is scored on a 0–100 within-metro scale. A qualitative band summarizes where the school lands.
- About averagePerforms above what its context predictsCounts for 39% of the rank
After accounting for income and demographics, does this school beat what the data would predict?
- LowStudents gain ground year over yearCounts for 33% of the rank
Are kids at this school learning faster than typical for the metro?
- About averageEquity within the schoolCounts for 17% of the rank
Are students clustered at similar levels, or split between top and bottom?
- StrongMost students were testedCounts for 11% 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.
| Component | Weight | Percentile | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Performs above what its context predicts | 39% | 46 | -1.6 |
| Students gain ground year over year | 33% | 8 | -14.0 |
| Equity within the school | 17% | 55 | +0.8 |
| Most students were tested | 11% | 89 | +4.4 |
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 →
Strongest Subjects (Decoded)
Decoded rank first; achievement rank in parentheses. Sorted by decoded rank, best first. Science is shown for reference only and is not part of any rank, tier, or composite.
Science
2024 proficiency45.6%meeting standard
Tested gradeGrades 5, 8
284 tested
202243.7%202343.4%202445.6%
Shown for reference only — science is not part of any rank.
All Rankings
How this school ranks across the metro, state, and among demographic peers.
| Scope | Achievement | Decoded | Shift |
|---|---|---|---|
| WA (1502 schools) | #1055 | #1159 | |
| Within Rural Washington (61 schools) | #39 | #45 |
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
- 2,059
- Free/reduced-price lunch
- 46.5%
- Student-teacher ratio
- 27.5:1
- Locale
- Rural, remote
- School type
- Regular public school
- Enrollment model
- Neighborhood attendance area
- Neighborhood median income
- $49,444ACS tract proxy
- Neighborhood poverty
- 18.0%ACS tract proxy
- SES index
- 22.0
- Assessment data year
- 2024
- CCD year
- 2023
- ACS vintage
- 2020-2024
High School Outcomes
Latest available dataGraduation 2024
Context-adjusted
Achievement vs. demographic expectation
Middle 40%
Achievement
Raw test performance
Middle 40%
This is context-adjusted achievement (Alpha) — how grade 10–11 scores compare to expectations from the school's demographics. It is not the growth-based composite shown for elementary and middle schools, because a single-tested-grade high school has no consecutive-grade cohort to measure growth from.
Subject performance
Annual share of the tested high-school grade meeting or exceeding the state standard. Science is descriptive and is not included in the ELA + math HS Decoded Rank.
ELA
2024 proficiency64%meeting standard
Tested gradeGrade 10
362 tested
202265.2%202359.3%202464%
Math
2024 proficiency18%meeting standard
Tested gradeGrade 10
363 tested
202220.5%202317.6%202418%
Science
2024 proficiency52.3%meeting standard
Tested gradeGrade 11
301 tested
202250.8%202343.6%202452.3%
- 202243%
- 202339%
- 202441%
Share of the tested grade (grade 10–11) meeting or exceeding standard in ELA + math, year over year. This is the school's achievement trend for the tested grade — not student growth and not the K-8 cohort-progression signal.
- Graduation
- 74%
- 2024 cohort · 86% extended
Data confidence: Medium— tested-student count, years of data, and participation for the high-school grades
Data limitations
- Graduation uses state cohort data. Coursework, offerings, and SAT/ACT counts use the latest available federal CRDC extracts, which can lag current graduation data.
- SAT/ACT data is count-only in this extract; without an enrollment denominator, we do not treat it as a participation rate.
- HS Decoded Rank is alpha-only: it summarizes how the school's grade 10/11 test scores compare to expectations from its demographic context, ranked against other HSs in the same metro / state / rural cohort. Graduation, AP, and SAT/ACT data above are descriptive context — they are not yet blended into the composite rank. The achievement-vs-decoded quadrant below plots context-adjusted ACHIEVEMENT (alpha) against raw achievement; it is NOT the growth-based composite shown for elementary and middle schools, because a single-tested-grade high school has no consecutive-grade cohort ladder from which to build a growth signal.
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 cluster closely on the proficiency ladder.
- Level 1 — Below standard37%
- Level 2 — Approaching standard26%
- Level 3 — Meets standard (proficient)24%
- Level 4 — Exceeds standard12%
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.
No nearby schools have been ranked yet.
Similar Schools
Schools with comparable demographics, income, and size. Both rank columns shown for direct comparison.
| School | Rating | Achievement | Decoded | Shift | Story | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bethel High School | #66 | #86HS | HS outcome | HS pool | ||
| Emerald Ridge High School | Ranking unavailable | |||||
| Dr. Dolores Silas High School | #80 | #97HS | HS outcome | HS pool | ||
| Graham Kapowsin High School | #84 | #93HS | HS outcome | HS pool | ||
| Gov John Rogers High School | #65 | #81HS | HS outcome | HS pool | ||
Historical Ranks
Year-by-year decoded and achievement ranks. Pandemic-affected years are excluded — we don't interpolate scores across the gap.
| Year | Achievement | Decoded | Shift |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Excluded | ||
| 2023 | Excluded | ||
Note: assessment transitions (where a state changes its test) are footnoted on the methodology page; trends are not computed across breakpoints.
Trajectory
Not used in the Decoded Rank — shown for context only.
Not enough years yet
Trajectory will appear once we have two or more years of rankings for this school.
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 2022 lost 12 proficiency points by 5th grade.
Based on 14 cohorts across math + ELA.
Learning rate: -7.5 proficiency points/yr (95% CI -13.8 to -1.1)
Medium confidence
| Cohort | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | Slope |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ELA · started 10th in 2022 | G10 277 | — | ||
| ELA · started 10th in 2023 | G10 266 | — | ||
| ELA · started 8th in 2022 | G8 239 | G10 277 | +19.2 | |
| ELA · started 7th in 2022 | G7 230 | G8 228 | -2.2 | |
| ELA · started 6th in 2022 | G6 236 | G7 232 | G8 231 | -2.6 |
| ELA · started 5th in 2022 | G5 250 | G6 225 | G7 231 | -9.7 |
| ELA · started 4th in 2022 | G4 258 | G5 218 | G6 212 | -23.4 |
| ELA · started 3rd in 2022 | G3 209 | G4 214 | G5 218 | +4.8 |
| ELA · started 3rd in 2023 | G3 205 | G4 210 | +4.7 | |
| ELA · started 3rd in 2024 | G3 197 | — | ||
| Math · started 10th in 2022 | G10 176 | — | ||
| Math · started 10th in 2023 | G10 168 | — | ||
| Math · started 8th in 2022 | G8 189 | G10 169 | -10.0 | |
| Math · started 7th in 2022 | G7 190 | G8 161 | -29.4 | |
| Math · started 6th in 2022 | G6 211 | G7 195 | G8 179 | -16.3 |
| Math · started 5th in 2022 | G5 217 | G6 202 | G7 197 | -10.1 |
| Math · started 4th in 2022 | G4 230 | G5 180 | G6 187 | -21.8 |
| Math · started 3rd in 2022 | G3 198 | G4 195 | G5 186 | -6.0 |
| Math · started 3rd in 2023 | G3 192 | G4 196 | +3.9 | |
| Math · started 3rd in 2024 | G3 197 | — |
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.
Student Growth (Washington)
Student growth percentile: the typical student here grew faster than 37% of Washington students with similar score histories.
Median Student Growth Percentile (SGP), as published by Washington's Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. 50 is exactly typical for the state. Based on 2 years of data.
| Year | Math SGP | ELA SGP | Students (math / ELA) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 43 | 43 | 390 / 386 |
| 2024 | 37 | 37 | 435 / 434 |
How this works: a Student Growth Percentile compares a student's score change to other Washington students who started at a similar place, so it measures growth independent of where a student began. We show Washington's published medians; Oregon does not publish student growth percentiles, so this panel never appears on Oregon schools. See the methodology page for how growth enters the Decoded Rank.
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. Its reliability shows up on the page as the confidence label and the rank interval, not as a standalone statistic.
SES index components
- SES method
- Blended SES index (ACS + FRL)
- SES index value
- 22.0
- FRL %
- 46.5%
- ELL %
- 5.0% · WA OSPI Report Card Enrollment
- SPED %
- 17.2% · WA OSPI Report Card Enrollment
- Tract median income (ACS 5-year)
- $49,444
- Tract poverty rate
- 18.0%
- Tract % bachelor's+
- 12.4%
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.