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Most similar nearby schools
Colusa High School → Williams Junior/Senior High → Sutter High School → Esparto High School → Live Oak High School → Compare all similar →🧭 A parent's read
- About 2 in 3 students read and write at grade level. On the state's own 11th-grade test, 64% met or exceeded the college-readiness bar — well above the state as a whole (statewide: 54%).
- Families don't leave. 94% of students who start the year here finish it here — top-tier retention statewide. Kids stay; that tells you something no test score does.
- Most grads aim beyond the UC system. Seniors file only ~0.4 UC applications each — families here mostly target CSU, private, or out-of-state colleges, so judge this school on more than its UC numbers.
- Worth asking about on a tour: counselor load. One counselor serves about 440 students here — above the 250-to-1 level counseling experts recommend. Ask how junior-year college advising actually gets covered.
Composed from this page's data — every claim is backed by a number in the sections below.
📋 At a glance
- 📚 7 AP courses offered — Strong
- ✅ Dual-enrollment program (college credit while in HS)
- 🔢 1 calculus classes · 4 physics · 1 chemistry
- 🎓 AP rigor: 64th percentile nationally
- 📝 SAT/ACT participation: Bottom 39% by test-taker volume
- 🎓 4-yr grad rate: 97% (90th percentile nationally)
Composed from federal CRDC offerings, EDFacts graduation data, and other public data. Full breakdowns below.
🎓 Where grads go — and what it costs & pays
UC admits by campus · Class of 2025
Getting in is step one. The cost above is the average family's net price — yours depends on your income — and your child's odds depend on their GPA + scores. See your family's real numbers at these campuses:
🎯 Get my child's odds + our real net price →Sources: UC Office of the President (admits); IPEDS net price + College Scorecard 10-yr earnings (cost & payoff). Full campus-by-campus breakdown below.
How Pierce High School compares for families
Real college outcomes data available below.
- ▸ StatewideUC Reach Score of 9 — 9 points below the California median of 18.
- ▸ Locally📘 #1 in Colusa County on ELA proficiency.
- ▸ vs Similar SchoolsRight at the peer median (UC Reach Score 6) across the 5 most similar nearby schools.
For Parents
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Objective, government-grade data — no school pays us for placement.
🎓 Academic rigor
AP + advanced-course offerings
Strong — solid AP program + advanced courses
64th 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 · 2020-21Bottom 39% 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?
90th 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 4.5 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 (+1.1%/yr, Total enrollment)
At per-pupil funding of $ / student:
| Horizon | Projected Total enrollment | Change | Funding impact / yr |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 yr (2027) | ~445 | +5 | $0 |
| 3 yr (2029) | ~454 | +14 | $0 |
| 5 yr (2031) | ~464 | +24 | $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 Pierce High School really compare on getting kids to college?
We've ranked it #3 of 9 most similar nearby schools on UC Reach. Unlock the full snapshot to see the head-to-head — who's ahead, by how much, and where it's heading.
Your similar-school group includes
Colusa High School · Williams Junior/Senior High · Sutter High School · Esparto High School · Live Oak High School · Winters High School · +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 Colusa County baseline — the demographic tide is moving every CA HS, so a school's gap vs. county is the actionable signal.
Families who enroll at Pierce High School stay (93.9% stability — elite). But enrollment is dropping faster than Colusa County (school +20.6% vs. county +24.8%). The audit question isn't why students leave — it's why fewer families are choosing to enroll in the first place.
29 of 472 students who enrolled at Pierce High School this year didn't maintain continuous enrollment (6.1% 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 — Pierce Joint 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: 32.0%
Federal: 12.4%
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 Pierce Joint 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).
Pierce High School sent 46 applications to the six most selective University of California campuses and 23.9% were admitted, producing a UC Reach Score of 9 — 9 points below the California median of 18, higher than 13% of California high schools..
+3 pts above peer median (6) · Ranked #3 of 9 similar schools
18
6
51
9
Higher than 13% of California high schools (980 ranked, ≥50 seniors)
Pierce High School's UC Reach Score of 9 is below the California median (18). The top 10% of CA schools achieve 51 or higher.
Overall, Pierce High School's UC Reach is higher than 13% of California high schools (980 ranked).
UC funnel — which kids are getting in at what GPA
Combining the school's applicant pool GPA, admit pool GPA, actual admit rate, and statewide CA admit rates by individual GPA band, we can read which GPA tiers tend to get in — and which don't.
| Campus | 4.00+ GPA | 3.70–3.99 GPA | 3.30–3.69 GPA | < 3.30 GPA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UC Santa Barbara | Strong shot | Real shot | Long odds | Filtered out |
| UC Davis | Strong shot | Strong shot | Real shot | Filtered out |
The numbers behind it
| Campus | Applicant GPA | Admit GPA | Lift ⓘ | Admit rate | vs peer schools @ same GPA ⓘ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UC Santa Barbara (2024) | 3.87 | 4.18 | +0.31 | 60.0% | Peers +0.32 · matches |
| UC Davis | 3.83 | 4.05 | +0.22 | 43.8% | Peers +0.29 · wider |
📊 Statewide CA admit rates by individual GPA band, 2025 (for reference)
| GPA band | UCB | UCLA | UCSD | UCSB | UCI | UCD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.00+ | 17.0% | 15.1% | 45.2% | 62.3% | 46.3% | 65.9% |
| 3.70–3.99 | 3.1% | 1.6% | 9.3% | 17.6% | 17.0% | 31.1% |
| 3.30–3.69 | 0.8% | 0.5% | 1.5% | 2.8% | 2.4% | 10.3% |
| 3.00–3.29 | 0.4% | 0.3% | 0.2% | 0.4% | 0.3% | 1.9% |
| < 3.00 | 0.7% | 0.4% | 0.3% | 0.2% | 0.1% | 0.7% |
UC Outcomes Trend — 2018–2025
Class size from CDE grade 12 enrollment. Campus-level data — applicant/admit totals may count a student at multiple campuses more than once.
Campus Breakdown — 2025
| Campus | Applicants | Admits | Enrollees | Admit Rate | UC Reach Score | Yield | Avg GPA (App) | Avg GPA (Adm) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UC Berkeley → Elite | 10 | —† | —† | —† | —† | — | 3.85 | —† |
| UCLA → Elite | 11 | —† | —† | —† | —† | — | 3.83 | —† |
| UC Santa Barbara → Selective | 9 | 4 | —† | 44.4% | 3 | — | 3.86 | —† |
| UC Davis → | 16 | 7 | 3 | 43.8% | 6 | 42.9% | 3.83 | 4.05 |
What This Means
For School Admins
The full Reach Report for Pierce 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 UC Reach Score (9) ranked head-to-head against your closest competitor schools
- ✓Your 5-year enrollment forecast (currently 1.1%/yr) with the revenue at stake
- ✓Student-retention benchmarking vs your county median — and the LCAP evidence to back your goals