Similar nearby schools
Most similar nearby schools
Warren (Earl) High → Paramount High → Norwalk High → Bell Gardens High → Jordan High → California High → Bell Senior High → Santa Fe High →📋 At a glance
- 📚 12 AP courses offered — Elite
- ✅ Gifted & talented program
- 🔢 4 calculus classes · 18 physics · 39 chemistry
- 🎓 AP rigor: 86th percentile nationally
- 📝 SAT/ACT participation: 87th percentile by test-taker volume
- 🎓 4-yr grad rate: 96% (82th percentile nationally)
Composed from federal CRDC offerings, EDFacts ACGR, and other public data. Full breakdowns below.
How Downey High compares for families
Standout academic depth by national standards.
- ▸ StatewideAP rigor in the top 14% nationally with 12 AP courses.
- ▸ LocallyCA trails the US average on NAEP 8th-grade math (−4 points). Stronger local schools matter even more.
- ▸ vs Similar SchoolsThe closest comparables nearby: Warren (Earl) High, Paramount High, Norwalk High and 5 more. See the sidebar to compare side-by-side.
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🎓 Academic rigor
AP + advanced-course offerings
Elite — exceptional AP + advanced course breadth
86th percentile nationally
Source: federal Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC 2020-21). CRDC reports what's offered + enrolled — it doesn't collect AP exam pass rates (College Board owns that data and doesn't release it school-level).
SAT / ACT participation
CRDC federal data · 2020-2187th percentile by test-taker volume
Source: federal Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC 2020-21). Volume — not score — is what's reported here. A higher count means more students at this school are entering the college admissions pipeline. Note: 2020-21 was COVID-disrupted; some districts (especially those that stayed remote longer) report unusually low or zero takers.
🎓 4-year graduation rate · federal EDFacts
What % of students graduate on time?
82th percentile nationally
Source: federal EDFacts ACGR (Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate), 2019 vintage via Urban Institute. EDFacts publishes a range (low-high) to preserve privacy on small cohorts; we display the midpoint.
👩🏫 Teacher workforce · federal CRDC
Teacher experience & reliability
Source: federal Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC 2017-18 — the most recent vintage that publishes per-school teacher quality fields; the 2020-21 sweep had them suppressed). "Inexperienced" = teachers in their first or second year. "Chronic absence" = teachers absent 10+ days/year.
🏛️ Federal Title I context
High-poverty school
Title I Schoolwide eligible
≥75% of students qualify for free/reduced lunch. These schools qualify for the highest tier of federal Title I funding and typically receive extra wraparound services. Academic outcomes vary widely — check the state assessment + grad-rate tiles.
Source: NCES Common Core of Data, free/reduced-price lunch eligibility. The actual Title I designation is a district decision and may differ from eligibility — but the federal eligibility math is what we show here. We don't claim to assert whether the district formally chose to enroll this school in Title I.
Counselor capacity
Source: U.S. Department of Education, Civil Rights Data Collection 2020-2021. Counselor ratio = the school's most recent total enrollment ÷ counselor FTE. The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) recommends a 250:1 maximum; the US national median across schools with on-staff counselors is roughly 430:1.
Enrollment trend & projection
Total enrollment + grade 12, NCES Common Core of Data (2021–2024).
If the recent trend holds…
At its recent rate of -2.2%/year, projecting from 2024's 4,051 students:
≈ 423 fewer students by 2029 — a real revenue/relevance risk worth getting ahead of.
An extrapolation of the recent trajectory, not a forecast of the school's plans; ignores one-off shocks.
Revenue at risk
At $18,952 per student in district revenue, the 423 students projected to be lost by 2029 represent ≈ $8,016,696/year in funding at risk.
District total revenue ÷ enrollment, NCES F-33. Public funding largely follows enrollment, so a shrinking class is a recurring budget hit.
Most similar nearby high schools
The schools most like this one — same type, blended on distance and size — and where their enrollment is heading. These are the schools families here weigh against each other.
| School | Type | Miles | HS enrollment | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Warren (Earl) High Downey |
Public | 0.9 | 3,609 | +4.6% |
| Paramount High Paramount |
Public | 3.0 | 3,400 | -13.9% |
| Norwalk High Norwalk |
Public | 2.9 | 2,075 | +2.8% |
| Bell Gardens High Bell Gardens |
Public | 3.0 | 2,046 | -15.7% |
| Jordan High Long Beach |
Public | 5.7 | 2,272 | -1.9% |
| California High Whittier |
Public | 5.9 | 2,261 | -13.4% |
| Bell Senior High Bell |
Public | 4.4 | 2,088 | -12.9% |
| Santa Fe High Santa Fe Springs |
Public | 2.1 | 1,865 | -4.6% |