Needles High School
Needles · San Bernardino County · Needles Unified · Public
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High Desert Premier Academy → Desert Learning Academy → Valley Academy → Mt San Jacinto High School → La Familia Continuation High → Compare all similar →📋 At a glance
- 📚 3 AP courses offered — Strong
- 🔢 1 calculus classes · 2 chemistry
- 🎓 AP rigor: 54th percentile nationally
- 🎓 4-yr grad rate: 95% (75th percentile nationally)
Composed from federal CRDC offerings, EDFacts ACGR, and other public data. Full breakdowns below.
How Needles High School compares for families
Solid mid-tier academic profile.
- ▸ StatewideAP rigor at the 54th percentile nationally with 3 AP courses.
- ▸ vs Similar SchoolsThe closest comparables nearby: High Desert Premier Academy, Desert Learning Academy, Valley Academy and 2 more. See the sidebar to compare side-by-side.
For Parents
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🎓 Academic rigor
AP + advanced-course offerings
Strong — solid AP program + advanced courses
54th 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 · 2020-21Source: 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.
🏛️ 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 8.4 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 (+0.5%/yr, Total enrollment)
At per-pupil funding of $ / student:
| Horizon | Projected Total enrollment | Change | Funding impact / yr |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 yr (2027) | ~258 | +1 | $0 |
| 3 yr (2029) | ~261 | +4 | $0 |
| 5 yr (2031) | ~263 | +6 | $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.
Needles High School — Enrollment & Outcomes Snapshot
Public · Needles · vs. 10 most similar nearby schools
- ▸Senior-class enrollment is up 11% (53→59 from 2018 to 2026), trailing the peer-group median of +28%.
- ▸Enrollment has been growing (+1.0%/yr); projects to ~265 by 2029.
Enrollment projection
Your school vs. its 10 most similar nearby schools
| School | Type | Size | UC Reach Score | Enroll. trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Needles High School | Public | 257 | — | +11% |
| Peer-group median | 16 | +28% | ||
| High Desert Premier Academy | Public | 273 | — | +240% |
| Desert Learning Academy | Public | 228 | — | -6% |
| Valley Academy | Public | 216 | — | +61% |
| Mt San Jacinto High School | Public | 310 | — | -17% |
| La Familia Continuation High | Public | 208 | — | +53% |
| Nova Academy-Coachella | Public | 205 | 24 | -21% |
| Lucerne Valley High School | Public | 323 | — | +77% |
| Amistad High (continuation) | Public | 200 | — | +12% |
| Calipatria High School | Public | 340 | 8 | -10% |
| San Pasqual Valley High School | Public | 180 | — | +43% |
UC Reach Score = top-6 UC admits ÷ senior class (can exceed 100 when students are admitted to multiple campuses). Enrollment trend = first-to-latest grade-12 change on file. Similar schools matched on proximity, size, type. Methodology →
Enrollment stability & demand — 2024-25
Two complementary signals: retention (do students stay once enrolled?) and demand (are families choosing the school?). Read against the San Bernardino County baseline — the demographic tide is moving every CA HS, so a school's gap vs. county is the actionable signal.
Needles High School outperformed San Bernardino County on enrollment (school +11.3% vs. county +0.0%) AND maintains 83.4% stability. Replicable model — worth documenting what's working. Chronic absenteeism is rising (26.4%, +8.4 pts since 2016-17) — a watch signal worth monitoring as a leading indicator.
49 of 296 students who enrolled at Needles High School this year didn't maintain continuous enrollment (16.6% 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 — Needles Unified (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: 22.7%
Federal: 21.1%
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 Needles Unified 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 2022 — 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) '22 | Avg GPA (Adm) '22 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UC Berkeley → Elite | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| UCLA → Elite | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| UC San Diego → Selective | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| UC Santa Barbara → Selective | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| UC Irvine → Selective | — | — | — | — | — | — | 4.19 | — |
| UC Davis → | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
What This Means
For School Admins
The full Reach Report for Needles 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 0.5%/yr) with the revenue at stake
- ✓Student-retention benchmarking vs your county median — and the LCAP evidence to back your goals