Del Paso Heights Elementary, Sacramento CA

Original Research by School Decision on Del Paso Heights Elementary

Del Paso Heights Elementary is a small school serving kindergarten through sixth grade in Sacramento's Del Paso Heights neighborhood, part of Twin Rivers Unified. The school enrolls just under five hundred students, with enrollment distributed fairly evenly across grades, though the fifth and sixth grades are slightly larger.

The student body is economically challenged. A very high share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the neighborhood's low-income character. Racially and ethnically, the enrollment is diverse: the largest groups are Hispanic and Asian students, with smaller populations of Black, multiracial, and white students, and very small numbers of Native American and Pacific Islander students.

Academic performance is substantially below state benchmarks across tested subjects and grades. In English language arts, school-wide proficiency sits below the median for county districts. In math, proficiency is similarly low. Science proficiency, measured only in fifth grade, is even lower. The reading and math profiles are relatively flat across the grade band tested, with sixth-grade language arts showing slightly higher proficiency than fourth and fifth grades, and sixth-grade math showing somewhat better results than fourth and fifth grades. Third-grade math and language arts perform somewhat better than the grades immediately above them, though all grades remain well below state proficiency standards. Only one year of data is available, so no trend information exists to indicate whether performance is stable, rising, or declining.

Within Sacramento County's school-district universe, Del Paso Heights sits in the bottom quartile for overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades. A parent may want to look into further detail with the school about how it is addressing these performance gaps and what supplemental academic support exists for students working below grade level.

Special-population enrollment data are not publicly available for this school. State graduation-rate and chronic-absenteeism data do not apply; the school serves only elementary grades.

Twin Rivers Unified, the parent district, has recently faced significant organizational strain. Teachers conducted their first-ever strike in March 2026 after nearly two weeks of disruption to classroom instruction. The resulting two-year contract includes salary increases and expanded health benefits, and the district cited staffing shortages and retention challenges as core issues. At the same time, voters approved two bonds in 2022 to modernize aging school buildings, which will fund physical improvements but also impose new property-tax obligations on homeowners in the district. Additionally, the district is overseeing major changes to Highlands Community Charter, a charter school it authorized, following audit findings on governance and finances.

In the broader Sacramento housing market, median home values in the Del Paso Heights zip code are below the state benchmark, and rents are correspondingly lower. Housing cost-to-income ratios remain elevated. The neighborhood is working-class and economically constrained, which aligns with the school's student composition and family circumstances.

See more original research from School Decision →

Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 324%

School 24% · District 38% · ▼ 14 pts below district

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

Grade 410%

School 10% · District 32% · ▼ 21 pts below district

▼ 27 pts below state median · ▼ 24 pts below county median

Grade 510%

School 10% · District 22% · ▼ 12 pts below district

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

Grade 629%

School 29% · District 28% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▼ 2 pts below state median · ▼ 2 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 320%

School 20% · District 35% · ▼ 15 pts below district

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

Grade 49%

School 9% · District 35% · ▼ 27 pts below district

▼ 33 pts below state median · ▼ 30 pts below county median

Grade 513%

School 13% · District 36% · ▼ 22 pts below district

▼ 32 pts below state median · ▼ 27 pts below county median

Grade 634%

School 34% · District 39% · ▼ 5 pts below district

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

Science

Grade 54%

School 4% · District 17% · ▼ 13 pts below district

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

This schoolTwin Rivers 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.