Canyon Creek Middle School

Washougal, WA · Grades 6–8

Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA

Neighborhood

Decoded Rank

All factors combined

Middle 40% decoded

#183 of 441

plausibly #120–358

Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA schools

Performing as Expected

#754 in WA

Achievement Rank

Raw test performance

Middle 40% achievement

#217 of 441

Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA schools

#660 in WA

places from achievement to Decoded Rank

Scores look modest, yet students tend to gain ground relative to peers the longer they are enrolled.

Data confidence:High326 students tested 8 years99% 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: #183 of 441

in Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA schools

Raw test scores rank this school #217, but after accounting for context, students here outperform what the data would predict. The Decoded Rank places it at #183.

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?

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

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

  • About averageEquity within the schoolCounts for 15% of the rank

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

  • LowDirection 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%39-3.8
Students gain ground year over year 30%85+10.4
Equity within the school 15%59+1.3
Direction over recent years 10%0-5.0
Most students were tested 10%99+4.9

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 (441 schools)#217#183
WA (1506 schools)#660#754
Among similar schools (6 peers)#4#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
168
Free/reduced-price lunch
29.2%
Student-teacher ratio
21.0:1
Locale
Rural, fringe
School type
Regular public school
Enrollment model
Neighborhood attendance area
Neighborhood median income
$117,798ACS tract proxy
Neighborhood poverty
0.1%ACS tract proxy
SES index
70.5
Assessment data year
2025
CCD year
2024
ACS vintage
2020-2024

Within Washougal School District: #2 of 6.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 are typically spread across proficiency levels.

  • Level 1 — Below standard25%
  • Level 2 — Approaching standard27%
  • Level 3 — Meets standard (proficient)26%
  • Level 4 — Exceeds standard21%

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
Cape Horn Skye Elementary#227#300High
Mount Pleasant School#168#320Low
Jemtegaard Middle School#164#13High
Columbia River Gorge Elementary School#291#276High
Washougal Special Services Rankings coming soon.

Similar Schools

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

SchoolAchievementDecodedShiftStoryConfidence
Marysville Coop Program#173#476Low
Valley Academy of Learning K-8 Rankings coming soon.
Nine Mile Falls Elementary#40#98Medium
Stillaguamish Valley Learning Center Rankings coming soon.
Freeman Middle School#56#103High

Historical Ranks

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

YearAchievementDecodedShift
2025#217#183
2023#122#83

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

Trajectory

2023: percentile 702025: percentile 39

Trending down

Based on 2 years (2023–2025).

Slope: -15.4 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 6th grade here in 2018 gained 51 proficiency points by 7th grade — gaining while the typical metro school declined.

Based on 10 cohorts across math + ELA.

Learning rate: +11.1 proficiency points/yr (95% CI 1.1 to 21.1)

Medium confidence

Cohort 2015201620172018201920232025 Slope
ELA · started 8th in 2015
G8
275
ELA · started 7th in 2015
G7
288
G8
290
+2.7
ELA · started 6th in 2015
G6
271
G7
290
G8
294
+11.5
ELA · started 6th in 2016
G6
285
G7
284
-1.1
ELA · started 6th in 2017
G6
263
G7
287
G8
274
+5.6
ELA · started 6th in 2018
G6
258
G7
309
+51.3
ELA · started 6th in 2019
G6
275
ELA · started 7th in 2023
G7
288
ELA · started 8th in 2025
G8
287
ELA · started 7th in 2025
G7
245
ELA · started 6th in 2025
G6
207
Math · started 8th in 2015
G8
267
Math · started 7th in 2015
G7
268
G8
282
+14.0
Math · started 6th in 2015
G6
267
G7
288
G8
296
+14.3
Math · started 6th in 2016
G6
290
G7
290
-0.3
Math · started 6th in 2017
G6
254
G7
263
G8
258
+1.8
Math · started 6th in 2018
G6
261
G7
277
+16.8
Math · started 6th in 2019
G6
268
Math · started 7th in 2023
G7
258
Math · started 8th in 2025
G8
271
Math · started 7th in 2025
G7
265
Math · started 6th in 2025
G6
187

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)
-0.18 (95% CI: -0.31 to -0.05)

SES index components

SES method
Blended SES index (ACS + FRL)
SES index value
70.5
FRL %
29.2%
ELL %
0.6% · WA OSPI Report Card Enrollment
SPED %
18.9% · WA OSPI Report Card Enrollment
Tract median income (ACS 5-year)
$117,798
Tract poverty rate
0.1%
Tract % bachelor's+
32.2%

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
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 →