Palo Alto High
Palo Alto · CA · Palo Alto Unified · Public
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Most similar nearby schools
Menlo-Atherton High → Henry M. Gunn High → Sequoia High → Woodside High → Los Altos High → Mountain View High → Washington High → Carlmont High →📋 At a glance
- 📚 27 AP courses offered — Elite
- ✅ Dual-enrollment program (college credit while in HS)
- 🔢 13 calculus classes · 24 physics · 23 chemistry
- 🎓 AP rigor: 90th percentile nationally
- 📝 SAT/ACT participation: 87th percentile by test-taker volume
- 🎓 4-yr grad rate: 95% (75th percentile nationally)
Composed from federal CRDC offerings, EDFacts ACGR, and other public data. Full breakdowns below.
How Palo Alto High compares for families
Standout academic depth by national standards.
- ▸ StatewideAP rigor in the top 10% nationally with 27 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: Menlo-Atherton High, Henry M. Gunn High, Sequoia 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
90th 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?
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
Lower-need school
Not Title I eligible (FRPL < 25%)
<25% of students qualify for free/reduced lunch. Well below the Title I threshold; expect a higher-income student body on average.
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 -2.1%/year, projecting from 2024's 1,891 students:
≈ 192 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 $26,872 per student in district revenue, the 192 students projected to be lost by 2029 represent ≈ $5,159,424/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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Menlo-Atherton High Atherton |
Public | 2.0 | 2,158 | -2.8% |
| Henry M. Gunn High Palo Alto |
Public | 2.8 | 1,643 | -12.0% |
| Sequoia High Redwood City |
Public | 5.5 | 1,854 | -4.7% |
| Woodside High Woodside |
Public | 4.1 | 1,660 | -5.6% |
| Los Altos High Los Altos |
Public | 4.4 | 2,170 | +1.6% |
| Mountain View High Mountain View |
Public | 7.2 | 2,187 | -5.6% |
| Washington High Fremont |
Public | 11.9 | 1,957 | +0.9% |
| Carlmont High Belmont |
Public | 8.7 | 2,360 | +2.5% |