Ferrucci Jr High

Puyallup, WA · Grades 7–9

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA

Neighborhood

Decoded Rank

All factors combined

Bottom 15% decoded

#662 of 675

plausibly #659–667

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA schools

Lower Performance

#1492 in WA

Achievement Rank

Raw test performance

Middle 40% achievement

#411 of 675

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA schools

#783 in WA

places from achievement to Decoded Rank

Raw scores are modest, and students tend to lose ground relative to peers while enrolled.

Data confidence:High1080 students tested 6 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: #662 of 675

in Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA schools

Raw test scores rank this school #411, 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 #662.

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?

  • LowStudents 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.
ComponentWeightPercentileContribution
Performs above what its context predicts 35%18-11.2
Students gain ground year over year 30%3-14.0
Equity within the school 15%27-3.4
Direction over recent years · thin data10%50+0.0
Most students were tested 10%98+4.8

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 (675 schools)#411#662
WA (1503 schools)#783#1492
Among similar schools (6 peers)#4#6

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
819
Free/reduced-price lunch
51.9%
Student-teacher ratio
21.0:1
Locale
Suburb, large
School type
Regular public school
Enrollment model
Neighborhood attendance area
Neighborhood median income
$154,857ACS tract proxy
Neighborhood poverty
0.0%ACS tract proxy
SES index
73.0
Assessment data year
2023
CCD year
2022
ACS vintage
2020-2024

High School Outcomes

Latest available data

Graduation 2023

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.

Within Puyallup School District: #29 of 29.Bottom 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 standard33%
  • Level 2 — Approaching standard21%
  • Level 3 — Meets standard (proficient)27%
  • Level 4 — Exceeds standard19%

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
Wildwood Elementary#377#268High
Sunrise Elementary#462#590High
Ridgecrest Elementary#216#183High
Shaw Road Elementary#234#256High
Spinning Elementary#255#330High

Similar Schools

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

SchoolAchievementDecodedShiftStoryConfidence
Chinook Middle School#20#34High
Salish Middle School#52#45Medium
Liberty Middle School#500#537High
Chase Middle School#65#90High
Sunrise Elementary#462#590High

Historical Ranks

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

YearAchievementDecodedShift
2023#411#662

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 6th grade here in 2018 gained 8 proficiency points by 7th grade — gaining, versus a metro median of about 0/yr.

Based on 8 cohorts across math + ELA.

Learning rate: +8.7 proficiency points/yr (95% CI -0.1 to 17.6)

Medium confidence

Cohort 201520162017201820192023 Slope
ELA · started 8th in 2015
G8
232
ELA · started 7th in 2016
G7
237
G8
253
+15.3
ELA · started 7th in 2017
G7
261
G8
261
+0.3
ELA · started 7th in 2018
G7
242
G8
250
+8.6
ELA · started 6th in 2018
G6
269
G7
277
+7.6
ELA · started 8th in 2023
G8
238
ELA · started 7th in 2023
G7
266
Math · started 8th in 2015
G8
232
Math · started 7th in 2016
G7
232
G8
223
-9.3
Math · started 7th in 2017
G7
242
G8
255
+13.1
Math · started 7th in 2018
G7
224
G8
235
+10.2
Math · started 6th in 2018
G6
227
G7
259
+32.2
Math · started 8th in 2023
G8
189
Math · started 7th in 2023
G7
232

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)
-0.43 (95% CI: -0.46 to -0.39)

SES index components

SES method
Blended SES index (ACS + FRL)
SES index value
73.0
FRL %
51.9%
ELL %
6.0% · WA OSPI Report Card Enrollment
SPED %
14.5% · WA OSPI Report Card Enrollment
Tract median income (ACS 5-year)
$154,857
Tract poverty rate
0.0%
Tract % bachelor's+
28.8%

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
2022–23 school year
NCES CCD vintage
2022
Census ACS 5-year vintage
2020-2024
Last updated
July 26, 2026
Methodology version
0.9.0
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 →