Cottage Lake Elementary

Woodinville, WA · Grades ?–5

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA

Neighborhood

Decoded Rank

All factors combined

Top 30% decoded

#163 of 680

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA schools

★ Above Expected

#499 in WA

Achievement Rank

Raw test performance

Top 30% achievement

#179 of 680

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA schools

#214 in WA

places from achievement to Decoded Rank

Decoded performance is roughly in line with expectations for this school's context.

Data confidence:Medium179 students tested 8 years98% 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: #163 of 680

in Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA schools

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 35% of the rank

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

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

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

  • StrongEquity within the schoolCounts for 15% of the rank

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

  • About averageDirection 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%41-3.2
Students gain ground year over year 30%82+9.7
Equity within the school 15%94+6.6
Direction over recent years 10%50+0.0
Most students were tested 10%98+4.8

Note: this school's Alpha-only Decoded Rank is #403 (vs the composite #163). The composite includes cohort progression and other signals that diverge from the context-adjusted Alpha. See methodology.

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
Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA (680 schools)#179#163
WA (1506 schools)#214#499
Among similar schools (6 peers)#4#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
258
Free/reduced-price lunch
14.3%
Student-teacher ratio
16.1:1
Locale
Suburb, large
School type
Regular public school
Enrollment model
Neighborhood attendance area
Neighborhood median income
$218,382ACS tract proxy
Neighborhood poverty
0.0%ACS tract proxy
SES index
95.6
Assessment data year
2025
CCD year
2024
ACS vintage
2020-2024

Within Northshore School District: #6 of 26.Top-40% 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 cluster closely on the proficiency ladder.

  • Level 1 — Below standard7%
  • Level 2 — Approaching standard25%
  • Level 3 — Meets standard (proficient)36%
  • Level 4 — Exceeds standard33%

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
Northshore Learning Options Rankings coming soon.
Northshore Networks Rankings coming soon.
Northshore Family Partnership Rankings coming soon.
Bear Creek Elementary Rankings coming soon.
East Ridge Elementary#51#220High

Similar Schools

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

SchoolAchievementDecodedShiftStoryConfidence
Innovation Lab High School Rankings coming soon.
Alki Elementary School#115#106High
Odyssey Middle School#73#56High
Bellevue Digital Discovery Rankings coming soon.
View Ridge Elementary School#44#29High

Historical Ranks

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

YearAchievementDecodedShift
2025#179#163
2024#144#162
2023#165#181

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

Trajectory

2023: percentile 532024: percentile 572025: percentile 41

Trending down

Based on 3 years (2023–2025).

Slope: -5.9 pct/yr (95% CI -82.8 to 71.1)

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 2015 gained 18 proficiency points by 5th grade.

Based on 18 cohorts across math + ELA.

Learning rate: +5.6 proficiency points/yr (95% CI 1.2 to 9.9)

Cohort 20152016201720182019202320242025 Slope
ELA · started 6th in 2015
G6
296
ELA · started 5th in 2015
G5
298
G6
296
-2.2
ELA · started 4th in 2015
G4
260
G5
266
G6
298
+18.9
ELA · started 3rd in 2015
G3
263
G4
276
G5
281
+8.9
ELA · started 3rd in 2016
G3
309
G4
300
G5
323
+7.1
ELA · started 3rd in 2017
G3
298
G4
329
G5
324
+13.4
ELA · started 3rd in 2018
G3
309
G4
320
+10.9
ELA · started 3rd in 2019
G3
296
ELA · started 5th in 2023
G5
294
ELA · started 4th in 2023
G4
317
G5
328
+11.2
ELA · started 3rd in 2023
G3
311
G4
279
G5
288
-11.4
ELA · started 3rd in 2024
G3
311
G4
328
+17.6
ELA · started 3rd in 2025
G3
266
Math · started 6th in 2015
G6
306
Math · started 5th in 2015
G5
313
G6
315
+2.2
Math · started 4th in 2015
G4
292
G5
275
G6
289
-1.5
Math · started 3rd in 2015
G3
300
G4
304
G5
312
+5.8
Math · started 3rd in 2016
G3
296
G4
320
G5
318
+11.2
Math · started 3rd in 2017
G3
300
G4
318
G5
320
+9.8
Math · started 3rd in 2018
G3
320
G4
318
-2.7
Math · started 3rd in 2019
G3
287
Math · started 5th in 2023
G5
271
Math · started 4th in 2023
G4
293
G5
293
+0.2
Math · started 3rd in 2023
G3
283
G4
282
G5
250
-16.7
Math · started 3rd in 2024
G3
304
G4
317
+12.8
Math · started 3rd in 2025
G3
261

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)
-0.13 (95% CI: -0.28 to +0.03)

SES index components

SES method
Blended SES index (ACS + FRL)
SES index value
95.6
FRL %
14.3%
ELL %
SPED %
Tract median income (ACS 5-year)
$218,382
Tract poverty rate
0.0%
Tract % bachelor's+
62.5%

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
2024–25 school year
NCES CCD vintage
2024
Census ACS 5-year vintage
2020-2024
Last updated
May 29, 2026
Methodology version
0.2.0

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