2024 La Center Elementary - SchoolDecoder Scorecard

Decoded Rank

All factors combined

Bottom 30% decoded

#341 of 430

plausibly #249–387

Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA schools

Below Expected

#752 in WA

Achievement Rank

Raw test performance

Middle 40% achievement

#176 of 430

Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA schools

#513 in WA

places from achievement to Decoded Rank

Typical Profile

Raw achievement and decoded performance are both close to expected for this school's context.

Data confidence:High268 students tested 7 years97% 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.

Raw test scores rank this school #176, 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 #341.

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

Below averagePerforms 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?
Below averageStudents gain ground year over yearCounts for 30% of the rank
Are kids at this school learning faster than typical for the metro?
Below averageEquity within the schoolCounts for 15% of the rank
Are students clustered at similar levels, or split between top and bottom?
Thin dataDirection 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.
Component	Weight	Percentile	Contribution
Performs above what its context predicts	35%	36	-4.8
Students gain ground year over year	30%	30	-6.0
Equity within the school	15%	27	-3.5
Direction over recent years · thin data	10%	50	+0.0
Most students were tested	10%	97	+4.7

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.

Scope	Achievement	Decoded
Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA (430 schools)	#176	#341
WA (1503 schools)	#513	#752
Among similar schools (6 peers)	#3	#4

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: 820
Free/reduced-price lunch: 32.9%
Student-teacher ratio: 16.4:1
Locale: Rural, distant
School type: Regular public school
Enrollment model: Neighborhood attendance area
Neighborhood median income: $119,043ACS tract proxy
Neighborhood poverty: 0.1%ACS tract proxy
SES index: 71.8
Assessment data year: 2024
CCD year: 2023
ACS vintage: 2020-2024

Within La Center School District: #2 of 2. 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.

Wide spread

Students at this school are broadly spread across proficiency levels.

L1 22%

L2 25%

L3 29%

L4 24%

Level 1 — Below standard22%
Level 2 — Approaching standard25%
Level 3 — Meets standard (proficient)29%
Level 4 — Exceeds standard24%

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.

School	Achievement	Decoded	Story	Confidence
La Center Academy	Rankings coming soon.
La Center High School	Rankings coming soon.
La Center Middle School	#251	#103	★★Outperforming Expectations	High
Wisdom Ridge Academy	Rankings coming soon.
Union Ridge Elementary	#90	#205	High Scores, Context Matters	High

Similar Schools

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

School	Achievement	Decoded	Story	Confidence
Northwood Middle School	#53	#90	Typical Profile	High
A G West Black Hills High School	Rankings coming soon.
Tumwater High School	Rankings coming soon.
Klahowya Secondary	#31	#43Also HS #3	Typical Profile	High
Pioneer Middle	#337	#270	Typical Profile	Medium

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	#176	#341

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

Trajectory

Not enough years yet

Trajectory will appear with 2025-26 data 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 2018 lost 18 proficiency points by 4th grade — declining about 5× faster than the metro median.

Based on 6 cohorts across math + ELA.

Learning rate: -5.1 proficiency points/yr (95% CI -12.9 to 2.8)

Medium confidence

Cohort	2016	2017	2018	2019	2024	Slope
ELA · started 4th in 2016	G4 236					—
ELA · started 3rd in 2016	G3 238	G4 238				+0.1
ELA · started 3rd in 2017		G3 238	G4 244			+5.7
ELA · started 3rd in 2018			G3 272	G4 254		-18.4
ELA · started 3rd in 2024					G3 251	—
Math · started 4th in 2016	G4 255					—
Math · started 3rd in 2016	G3 258	G4 247				-11.6
Math · started 3rd in 2017		G3 235	G4 235			-0.6
Math · started 3rd in 2018			G3 258	G4 251		-7.3
Math · started 3rd in 2024					G3 260	—

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 54% 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 8 years of data.

Year	Math SGP	ELA SGP	Students
2015	45	52	422
2016	38	32	406
2017	43	48	472
2018	53	50	433
2019	53	46	507
2023	57	53	480
2024	64	51	507
2025	57	52	472

Washington did not administer statewide tests during 2020–2022, so those years are absent — a gap in the data, not a score of zero.

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.

Shrunk Alpha (95% CI): -0.22 (95% CI: -0.24 to -0.20)

SES index components

SES method: Blended SES index (ACS + FRL)
SES index value: 71.8
FRL %: 32.9%
ELL %: 2.2% · WA OSPI Report Card Enrollment
SPED %: 18.5% · WA OSPI Report Card Enrollment
Tract median income (ACS 5-year): $119,043
Tract poverty rate: 0.1%
Tract % bachelor's+: 32.3%

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.

Read the full methodology → · Data sources →