Cawston Elementary, Hemet CA - Test Scores & Data

Original Research by School Decision on Cawston Elementary

Cawston Elementary is a regular public school serving kindergarten through fifth grade in Hemet, a working-class bedroom community in the San Jacinto Valley of western Riverside County. The school sits in a city long known for affordability and proximity to job centers across the Inland Empire and Southern California, drawing families priced out of other areas. Hemet itself is car-dependent, organized around wide arterials, with a preserved historic downtown and dispersed schools rather than a concentrated campus cluster. Most residents drive to work with an average commute that stretches beyond the city limits.

The school enrolls a substantial number of students, with relatively balanced grade-level enrollment across the elementary years. The student body is predominantly Hispanic, with a substantial Black population and smaller shares of white and Asian students. More than four out of five students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a marker of low family income. Data on the share of students with individualized education plans or English learner status was not available.

State test results from 2024-25 show proficiency below the state benchmark across all measured subjects and grades. In English language arts, third-grade proficiency was below grade four and five, with grade five showing notably lower performance. In math, the pattern is steeper: proficiency drops significantly from third grade through fifth. Science proficiency in fifth grade was the lowest result across all tested areas. Overall proficiency across tested subjects places the school above the midpoint among Riverside County districts, but the trend within grades and across subjects suggests that students are not meeting grade-level standards at rates that would be typical of higher-performing schools. A parent may want to look into this further with the school and ask what interventions or support structures are in place for struggling learners, and what the school's approach is to the gap between third and upper elementary performance.

Hemet Unified has pursued sustained facility investment through a voter-approved bond measure, with the most recent bond series issued in late 2024. These funds support school safety and security improvements, modernization of academic and technical classrooms and labs, and repairs to aging building systems. This is the kind of infrastructure work that unfolds over years and shapes the physical school environment a child encounters.

The local housing market reflects Hemet's role as an affordable alternative within a high-cost region. Home values are well below state and national benchmarks. Rental housing is similarly priced relative to the region, though monthly rent remains a meaningful share of median household income. This affordability draws families, but median household income in Hemet runs well below the state average, and the unemployment rate sits modestly above historical norms.

Cawston serves a community where economic pressures on families are visible in lunch qualification rates and where English learners may be present, though the count was unavailable. The school's test performance suggests it faces the kind of academic demands that many high-poverty elementary schools encounter, with particular steepness in the math trajectory from third to fifth grade. Whether this reflects curriculum pacing, student mobility, instructional staffing, or other factors is not evident from state data alone.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 345%

School 45% · District 29% · ▲ 15 pts above district

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

Grade 423%

School 23% · District 17% · ▲ 6 pts above district

▼ 15 pts below state median · ▼ 7 pts below county median

Grade 523%

School 23% · District 15% · ▲ 7 pts above district

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

English language arts

Grade 339%

School 39% · District 33% · ▲ 7 pts above district

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

Grade 439%

School 39% · District 29% · ▲ 10 pts above district

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

Grade 534%

School 34% · District 36% · ▼ 2 pts below district

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

Science

Grade 516%

School 16% · District 16%

▼ 12 pts below state median · ▼ 7 pts below county median

This schoolHemet 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.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 3Lower-income36%Higher-income50%14 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income34%Higher-income68%35 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income31%Higher-income46%15 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income40%Higher-income63%23 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income19%Higher-income42%23 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income21%Higher-income29%8 pp gap