Browns Elementary, Rio Oso CA - Test Scores & Data

Original Research by School Decision on Browns Elementary

Browns Elementary serves kindergarten through eighth grade in Rio Oso, a small unincorporated rural community in Sutter County's Sacramento Valley. The school is a regular public school with a student body of roughly a hundred students spread across nine grades, drawing from an agricultural area dominated by farms and orchards. The student population is majority white, with substantial shares of Hispanic students and smaller populations of Asian, multiracial, and Pacific Islander students. About a third of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

Academic performance reflects a school under strain. In English language arts, the school sits slightly above the midpoint among Sutter County districts overall, with proficiency rates varying significantly by grade. Third and fifth graders show proficiency rates around forty percent, while fourth and eighth graders perform higher at roughly two-thirds. Sixth graders lag, with proficiency below forty percent. The Grade 7 result was suppressed, likely due to small class size.

Mathematics proficiency is considerably weaker. Third graders show modest results near forty-five percent, but proficiency drops steeply from there. Fourth and fifth graders sit in the mid-to-high twenties, sixth graders in the mid-teens, and eighth graders recover to around fifty percent. The Grade 7 math result was also suppressed. Across both math and ELA, the school's overall proficiency index places it above the median among county districts, though this reflects uneven performance across grades and a pattern of specific grade-level struggles, most notably in the middle elementary years for math.

Science results are reported for only fifth and eighth grades. Fifth-grade proficiency is around thirty percent on the California Science Test. Eighth-grade science proficiency is notably low, around seven percent, suggesting substantial gaps in that subject or population by that grade level.

The school's grade structure and small enrollment mean that some classes are quite small. Grade 7 enrollment is particularly small, which explains the suppressed testing results for that grade; California suppresses individual proficiency rates when groups are too small to protect student privacy. Eighth grade is also small, yet results are reported, which may mean those classes still met the threshold.

Rio Oso itself is a quiet, dispersed agricultural settlement with few commercial services, miles from the nearest town center. Most residents own their homes on rural parcels. The area is dominated by rice, almond, walnut, peach, and tomato cultivation. The broader regional economy, drawing workers from Yuba City and surrounding Sutter County, centers on healthcare, retail, and agriculture. Housing values in the zipcode are modest relative to state benchmarks. The nearest significant civic infrastructure, libraries, and healthcare sit in Yuba City, roughly thirty miles away.

The school sits in a context of slow population growth locally, though the nearby Plumas Lake area to the north is experiencing rapid residential expansion. Enrollment data do not indicate whether Browns Elementary itself is growing, stable, or declining, nor was information available on staffing, attendance, chronic absenteeism, or special-education and English-learner populations. A parent may want to look into these details with the school directly, particularly whether there have been changes in staffing, teaching turnover, or curriculum focus in response to the math and science proficiency patterns.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 344%

School 44% · District 44%

▲ 1 pts above state median · ▲ 6 pts above county median

Grade 427%

School 27% · District 27%

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

Grade 518%

School 18% · District 18%

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

Grade 617%

School 17% · District 17%

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

Grade 850%

School 50% · District 50%

▲ 22 pts above state median · ▲ 15 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 344%

School 44% · District 44%

▲ 3 pts above state median · ▲ 9 pts above county median

Grade 467%

School 67% · District 67%

▲ 25 pts above state median · ▲ 22 pts above county median

Grade 541%

School 41% · District 41%

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

Grade 639%

School 39% · District 39%

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

Grade 864%

School 64% · District 64%

▲ 20 pts above state median · ▲ 9 pts above county median

Science

Grade 529%

School 29% · District 29%

▲ 1 pts above state median · ▼ 4 pts below county median

Grade 87%

School 7% · District 7%

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

Social studies

Grade 857%

School 57% · District 57%

▲ 8 pts above state median · ▲ 7 pts above county median

This schoolBrowns Elementary, 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.