Lighthouse Community Charter, Oakland CA

Original Research by School Decision on Lighthouse Community Charter

Lighthouse Community Charter is a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school in East Oakland serving a student population that is economically stretched and academically underperforming on state tests. About nine in ten students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and the enrollment is small, with roughly equal cohorts across grades. The student body is predominantly Latino, with smaller populations of Black and multiracial students, and Asian and white enrollment at less than a handful of students each.

The school's academic results are well below proficiency in both English language arts and mathematics across all tested grades. In English language arts, measured proficiency across the grade span (third through eighth) sits at a low level, with third grade showing the highest result and fourth grade the lowest. Math proficiency is even lower, with fourth and fifth grades showing single-digit-range results. Sixth grade performs somewhat better in both subjects but remains far below a typical benchmark. Science proficiency, tested in fifth and eighth grades, is similarly low. These results place the school in the bottom quartile of schools in Alameda County on overall proficiency.

The weak test scores likely reflect the challenges students face outside school. A very high share of the enrollment lives in poverty or near it, and while the data submitted did not include English learner classification rates, the charter's location in East Oakland and the demographic composition suggest that English learners may represent a substantial part of the population. The school's grade band ends at eighth, so no graduation rate is available.

Lighthouse operates within the Lighthouse Community Charter District, which runs two TK-through-12 campuses. The sister campus, Lodestar, completed a phase-two expansion and graduated its first high school class in 2024, offering families in the Sobrante Park neighborhood a full K-12 pathway at one site. Lighthouse itself sits in the Hegenberger Road area, a part of Oakland with limited walkability and few neighborhood anchors compared to the downtown or college-area corridors. Both campuses now offer full-day Transitional Kindergarten as part of California's expanding early-education rollout.

A recent facility disruption warrants noting: the Lighthouse high school building was temporarily closed for repairs, moving ninth-through-twelfth-grade classes to a hybrid model, though the kindergarten-through-eighth grades continued in person. A parent with a high schooler at Lighthouse would want to confirm the status and timeline of that repair work with the school directly.

For a family considering Lighthouse, the central question is remedial support. The proficiency data shows students arriving at or progressing through the school with significant gaps in foundational skills, particularly in mathematics. A parent may want to look into the specific interventions, tutoring, reading support, and small-group instruction the school offers to close those gaps, as well as the qualifications and availability of instructional staff and specialists. Class sizes appear manageable given the total enrollment and grade distributions, but the school's track record of moving students toward proficiency would be worth understanding in detail.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 328%

School 28% · district not reported

▼ 15 pts below state median · ▼ 28 pts below county median

Grade 47%

School 7% · district not reported

▼ 30 pts below state median · ▼ 43 pts below county median

Grade 58%

School 8% · district not reported

▼ 23 pts below state median · ▼ 34 pts below county median

Grade 619%

School 19% · district not reported

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

Grade 713%

School 13% · district not reported

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

Grade 815%

School 15% · district not reported

▼ 13 pts below state median · ▼ 18 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 337%

School 37% · district not reported

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

Grade 47%

School 7% · district not reported

▼ 35 pts below state median · ▼ 46 pts below county median

Grade 523%

School 23% · district not reported

▼ 23 pts below state median · ▼ 34 pts below county median

Grade 625%

School 25% · district not reported

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

Grade 719%

School 19% · district not reported

▼ 26 pts below state median · ▼ 31 pts below county median

Grade 822%

School 22% · district not reported

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

Science

Grade 511%

School 11% · district not reported

▼ 17 pts below state median · ▼ 28 pts below county median

Grade 816%

School 16% · district not reported

▼ 10 pts below state median · ▼ 14 pts below county median

This schoolDistrict average, 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.