Compare with peers
Most similar nearby schools
Desert Junior-Senior High → Harmony Magnet Academy → Kern Workforce 2000 Academy → Vista West Continuation High → California City High School → Compare all similar →📋 At a glance
- 📚 2 AP courses offered — Strong
- ✅ Dual-enrollment program (college credit while in HS)
- ✅ Gifted & talented program
- 🔢 1 calculus classes · 1 physics · 3 chemistry
- 🎓 AP rigor: 56th percentile nationally
- 📝 SAT/ACT participation: Bottom 4% by test-taker volume
- 🎓 4-yr grad rate: 82% (Bottom 29% of US high schools by 4-yr grad rate)
Composed from federal CRDC offerings, EDFacts graduation data, and other public data. Full breakdowns below.
How Kern Valley High School compares for families
Solid mid-tier academic profile.
- ▸ StatewideAP rigor at the 56th percentile nationally with 2 AP courses.
- ▸ vs Similar SchoolsThe closest comparables nearby: Desert Junior-Senior High, Harmony Magnet Academy, Kern Workforce 2000 Academy and 2 more. See the sidebar to compare side-by-side.
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🎓 Academic rigor
AP + advanced-course offerings
Strong — solid AP program + advanced courses
56th percentile nationally
✅ Gifted/talented program
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 · 2020-21Bottom 4% 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?
Bottom 29% of US high schools by 4-yr grad rate
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.
🏛️ 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.
SBAC academic outcomes — grade 11, 2025
Share of grade-11 students meeting or exceeding the California standard on Smarter Balanced ELA and Math. This is the academic-readiness signal that pairs with UC Reach (post-grad outcomes), stability (retention), and absenteeism (engagement). Note: statewide median Math is only ~20% — a school at 20% isn't an outlier; one at 45%+ genuinely is.
Source: California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) Smarter Balanced research files. Benchmarks limited to non-virtual public & charter HS with ≥30 tested students.
Student composition — 2025-26
HS grades 9–12 racial/ethnic composition and program subgroups, from CDE Census Day Enrollment. Two-year shift shown when ≥1 pt — surfaces how the community served has changed since 2023-24.
Race / ethnicity
Program subgroups
Source: California Department of Education, Census Day Enrollment 2025-26 (HS grades 9–12). Δ shown when shift is ≥1 pt since 2023-24. Categories below 0.5% omitted.
Chronic absenteeism — 2024-25
Share of students missing 10% or more of expected attendance — the leading indicator that often precedes the demand decline shown above. Families disengaging tend to raise absenteeism first, then formally leave. Basis: grades 9–12.
Absenteeism is up 8.9 pp since 2016-17. A rising absenteeism trend often precedes formal departure — worth investigating which subgroups are driving it.
Source: California Department of Education, Chronic Absenteeism 2024-25. Benchmarks limited to non-virtual public & charter HS with ≥100 eligible students. CDE didn't publish a usable 2019-20 file (COVID).
Enrollment trend & projection
If this trend holds (+1.6%/yr, Total enrollment)
At per-pupil funding of $ / student:
| Horizon | Projected Total enrollment | Change | Funding impact / yr |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 yr (2027) | ~517 | +8 | $0 |
| 3 yr (2029) | ~534 | +25 | $0 |
| 5 yr (2031) | ~551 | +42 | $0 |
Straight-line extrapolation of the recent annual rate — a what-if, not a forecast of intent. Default = California's LCFF base grant for grades 9–12 ($12,423/ADA). Edit the figure to match your school.
How does Kern Valley High School really compare on getting kids to college?
Unlock a head-to-head snapshot of Kern Valley High School against its 10 most similar nearby schools — matched on size, location, type. See exactly where it stands on the college pipeline.
Your similar-school group includes
Desert Junior-Senior High · Harmony Magnet Academy · Kern Workforce 2000 Academy · Vista West Continuation High · California City High School · Mojave Jr./Sr. High · +4 more
Enrollment stability & demand — 2024-25
Two complementary signals: retention (do students stay once enrolled?) and demand (are families choosing the school?). Read against the Kern County baseline — the demographic tide is moving every CA HS, so a school's gap vs. county is the actionable signal.
On the surface Kern Valley High School looks fine — enrollment is +31.2% vs. Kern County +12.7%, and 87.9% of students stay through year-end. But <strong>chronic absenteeism is at 32.6%, up +8.9 pts since 2016-17 (county median 19.2%). Disengagement leads departure — families pull back from the day-to-day before they formally leave. The demand signal usually follows within 2–3 years.
66 of 544 students who enrolled at Kern Valley High School this year didn't maintain continuous enrollment (12.1% non-stability). Mid-year transfers, dropouts, and other exits are all counted.
Stability by student group
Nearest peer high schools
Source: California Department of Education, Stability Rate 2024-25. Benchmarks limited to non-virtual public & charter HS with ≥100 cumulative enrollees so by-design-high-churn continuation schools don't dominate the bottom of the distribution. Cumulative enrollment counts every student on the rolls during the year, so it can exceed peak-day enrollment.
District financial profile — Kern High (FY2020)
From 4 years of NCES F-33 filings (the federally-mandated district finance survey). Public schools don't have their own books — the district does. These figures show the financial scale, revenue dependence, instruction-vs-overhead mix, and long-term debt that shape what a school can sustain.
Local: 25.3%
Federal: 12.7%
Source: NCES F-33 Annual Survey of School System Finances (Urban Institute Education Data API). Latest year currently published: FY2020. F-33 is a district-level federal filing — it reflects the Kern High as a whole, not this individual school's books. Revenue mix shows where the district's dollars come from (state aid dominates in CA via LCFF). Instruction share is current expenditure on instruction ÷ total current expenditure (national benchmark ~60%). Long-term debt is end-of-year outstanding (mostly facilities bonds).
GPA figures reflect 2020 — UC has not yet released applicant/admit GPA for 2024.
Campus Breakdown — 2024
| Campus | Applicants | Admits | Enrollees | Admit Rate | UC Reach Score | Yield | Avg GPA (App) '20 | Avg GPA (Adm) '20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UC Berkeley → Elite | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| UCLA → Elite | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| UC San Diego → Selective | — | — | — | — | — | — | 3.90 | — |
| UC Santa Barbara → Selective | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
What This Means
For School Admins
The full Reach Report for Kern Valley High School
A board- and LCAP-ready intelligence brief: your enrollment retention and college outcomes, benchmarked against your closest competitors, with a 5-year forecast, concrete steps to act on, and the rigor + outcomes story you can share with your families. Built from primary public data — prepared for you, not auto-generated.
- ✓Your 5-year enrollment forecast (currently 1.6%/yr) with the revenue at stake
- ✓Student-retention benchmarking vs your county median — and the LCAP evidence to back your goals