Machado Elementary, Lake Elsinore CA

Original Research by School Decision on Machado Elementary

Machado Elementary is a small school of about five hundred students in Lake Elsinore, serving kindergarten through fifth grade. The student body is economically stressed: a substantial majority qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch. The enrollment is predominantly Hispanic, with small populations of white and other students; the data do not include rates for English learners or students with IEPs.

The school's academic performance is below the midpoint among Riverside County elementary schools. In English language arts, proficiency rates across third through fifth grades cluster in the low-to-mid range; the lowest proficiency appears in fifth grade math, where few students test at grade level. In third-grade math, performance is higher than in the upper grades but still weak. Science proficiency, measured in fifth grade only, sits in the low range. The school has only one year of current test data, so trend information is not available.

Lake Elsinore itself is a fast-growing residential city built around Southern California's largest natural freshwater lake, with newer master-planned neighborhoods (Summerly, Tuscany Hills, Alberhill District) alongside a small historic downtown on Main Street with century-old storefronts and local businesses. The city is experiencing steep growth, having more than doubled in the past two decades, and is actively developing new housing through large-scale projects like Alberhill Lake Elsinore and Alberhill Villages. Recreation and the lakefront anchor daily life; the Lake Elsinore Diamond baseball stadium and parks like Serenity Park are community gathering points. Outside the five-block walkable downtown core, the city is automobile-oriented and freeway-served. Housing prices are moderate to mid-range for the region, though rents have ticked upward slightly.

Lake Elsinore Unified is the parent district. In November 2024, voters approved Measure T, a major bond measure for school facilities. This will fund repairs and upgrades to classrooms, labs, roofs, plumbing and electrical systems, safety systems, asbestos and lead removal, and transitional kindergarten space. The bond does carry a property tax increase that will affect homeowners and renters in the district for the duration of debt service, roughly spanning the next two decades. For a typical homeowner, the annual cost is modest but not insignificant.

At Machado, low test proficiency across both math and literacy suggests students are not yet working at grade level in core subjects. A parent may want to explore with the school what supports exist for students who are falling behind, how the school identifies struggling readers and mathematicians early, and what interventions are in place. The school serves a community with high economic stress, which often correlates with resource constraints and home-literacy environments that place the burden on the school itself.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 322%

School 22% · District 39% · ▼ 17 pts below district

▼ 21 pts below state median · ▼ 15 pts below county median

Grade 418%

School 18% · District 31% · ▼ 13 pts below district

▼ 19 pts below state median · ▼ 12 pts below county median

Grade 57%

School 7% · District 22% · ▼ 15 pts below district

▼ 23 pts below state median · ▼ 17 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 330%

School 30% · District 39% · ▼ 9 pts below district

▼ 11 pts below state median · ▼ 8 pts below county median

Grade 425%

School 25% · District 38% · ▼ 14 pts below district

▼ 17 pts below state median · ▼ 13 pts below county median

Grade 526%

School 26% · District 41% · ▼ 15 pts below district

▼ 20 pts below state median · ▼ 16 pts below county median

Science

Grade 520%

School 20% · District 24% · ▼ 5 pts below district

▼ 9 pts below state median · ▼ 4 pts below county median

This schoolLake Elsinore Unified, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.