Harmony Elementary, Hemet CA - Test Scores & Data

Original Research by School Decision on Harmony Elementary

Harmony Elementary sits on South Cawston Avenue in Hemet, a working-class residential city in the San Jacinto Valley of western Riverside County. It serves kindergarten through fifth grade as a regular public school within the Hemet Unified School District, and its enrollment puts it on the larger end for an elementary school. The student body is predominantly Hispanic, with meaningful representation of Black and white students as well. A very large share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which means this is a school serving families with significant economic pressures. Data on English learner rates and students with IEPs were not reported in what we reviewed.

On the California state assessments, Harmony's results in the most recent school year tell a clear story: ELA proficiency in the tested grades runs from the mid-thirties to just above forty percent, while math proficiency is lower across the board, ranging from the low-to-mid teens in fourth grade up to around a third in third grade. Fifth-grade science results are also modest. Taken together, the school's overall proficiency index sits below the midpoint among districts in Riverside County, the comparison set available for this school. Multi-year trend data was not available, so it isn't possible to say whether these numbers are improving, holding steady, or declining. A parent who wants to understand the direction of academic progress would want to ask the school directly about what instructional changes or supports are in place.

The broader community context matters here. Hemet's median household income runs well below the California state average, and the city developed largely as an affordable bedroom community for people working elsewhere in the Inland Empire and Southern California. It is heavily car-dependent; most daily errands and commutes require driving. Civic assets include the Hemet Public Library, a historic downtown near Harvard Street with preserved early-twentieth-century commercial buildings, and a network of parks including access to Diamond Valley Lake for hiking and boating. Health care and retail trade are the city's largest employment sectors, with the school district itself among the largest employers.

Housing near the school is priced well below the California statewide benchmark, though it still sits meaningfully above the national median. Values in the area have dipped very slightly year over year, while rents have edged up modestly. The rent-to-income ratio in this zip code runs above the standard affordability threshold, which reflects the economic strain many Hemet families carry.

At the district level, Hemet Unified has been executing a voter-approved general obligation bond program, with the most recent series issued in late 2024. Those proceeds are directed toward safety and security upgrades, modernization of classrooms and labs across science, technology, engineering, math, and vocational programs, and repairs to aging infrastructure. For a family relocating to Hemet, this represents a sustained investment in physical facilities that should continue to show up across district schools over the coming years.

For programs, no specific offerings at Harmony were reported in the data we reviewed, so we left that out rather than guess.

The picture at Harmony is of a large neighborhood elementary school serving a high-need population in a community with real economic constraints. Academic proficiency rates are low relative to the state and to the broader Riverside County district comparison set, and that is worth taking seriously. Parents who enroll here would reasonably want to understand what additional supports the school provides for students who are not yet meeting grade-level standards, and what the school's own internal data shows about growth over time.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 334%

School 34% · District 29% · ▲ 4 pts above district

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

Grade 415%

School 15% · District 17% · ▼ 2 pts below district

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

Grade 518%

School 18% · District 15% · ▲ 3 pts above district

▼ 12 pts below state median · ▼ 6 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 340%

School 40% · District 33% · ▲ 7 pts above district

▼ 1 pts below state median · ▲ 2 pts above county median

Grade 435%

School 35% · District 29% · ▲ 6 pts above district

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

Grade 541%

School 41% · District 36% · ▲ 4 pts above district

▼ 5 pts below state median · ▼ 1 pts below county median

Science

Grade 517%

School 17% · District 16% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▼ 11 pts below state median · ▼ 6 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-income37%Higher-income58%21 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income36%Higher-income30%6 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income34%Higher-income76%42 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income31%Higher-income53%22 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income15%Higher-income17%3 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income16%Higher-income29%12 pp gap