Santa Monica High
Santa Monica · CA · Santa Monica-Malibu Unified · Public
Similar nearby schools
Most similar nearby schools
Culver City High → Mira Costa High → Taft Charter High → University High School Charter → Fairfax Senior High → Beverly Hills High → El Segundo High → Augustus Hawkins High →📋 At a glance
- 📚 12 AP courses offered — Elite
- 🔢 14 calculus classes
- 🎓 AP rigor: 68th percentile nationally
- 📝 SAT/ACT participation: 81st percentile by test-taker volume
- 🎓 4-yr grad rate: 95% (75th percentile nationally)
Composed from federal CRDC offerings, EDFacts graduation data, and other public data. Full breakdowns below.
How Santa Monica High compares for families
Stronger-than-average college-prep profile.
- ▸ StatewideAP rigor at the 68th percentile 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: Culver City High, Mira Costa High, Taft Charter High and 5 more. See the sidebar to compare side-by-side.
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Objective, government-grade data — no school pays us for placement.
🎓 Academic rigor
AP + advanced-course offerings
Elite — exceptional AP + advanced course breadth
68th 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 · 2020-2181st 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?
75th 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
Title I Targeted Assistance eligible
35-39% FRPL — qualifies for Title I Targeted Assistance
35-39% of students qualify for free/reduced lunch. The school can receive Title I funds targeted to identified students (not schoolwide).
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 -2.8%/year, projecting from 2024's 2,588 students:
≈ 341 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 $26,928 per student in district revenue, the 341 students projected to be lost by 2029 represent ≈ $9,182,448/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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Culver City High Culver City |
Public | 4.8 | 2,012 | -9.7% |
| Mira Costa High Manhattan Beach |
Public | 11.0 | 2,473 | +1.0% |
| Taft Charter High Woodland Hills |
Public · charter | 11.9 | 2,221 | +0.6% |
| University High School Charter Los Angeles |
Public · charter | 2.7 | 1,385 | -4.4% |
| Fairfax Senior High Los Angeles |
Public | 8.7 | 1,495 | -12.0% |
| Beverly Hills High Beverly Hills |
Public | 5.4 | 1,173 | -5.4% |
| El Segundo High El Segundo |
Public | 7.3 | 1,232 | -6.0% |
| Augustus Hawkins High Los Angeles |
Public | 11.4 | 1,122 | +6.4% |