Encinal Elementary, Live Oak CA - Test Scores & Data

Original Research by School Decision on Encinal Elementary

Encinal Elementary sits on Larkin Road in Live Oak, a small city in northern Sutter County that runs along the Highway 99 corridor between Yuba City and Chico. The community has a suburban-rural character rooted in agriculture, with a walkable historic commercial strip along Broadway and steady residential growth underway. The city publicly anticipates a meaningful population increase in coming decades, new-construction subdivisions are active, and the city completed a Downtown Reinvestment Plan identifying redevelopment opportunities. For families considering a home purchase here, housing prices are well below the California median and have held roughly flat year over year, sitting close to the national median. That affordability gap relative to the rest of the state is one of the more defining features of the local housing market.

The school itself is small, serving kindergarten through eighth grade. With enrollment in the low hundreds spread across nine grade levels, most individual grades are quite small, which means class sizes are tight and community feel is close-knit by default. Roughly half of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The student body is predominantly white and Hispanic, with a small share of Asian students and a modest multiracial group.

On California's Smarter Balanced assessments, the picture is uneven across grades. English language arts results in the early and middle elementary grades are solid, with a clear majority of third and fourth graders meeting or exceeding standards. ELA holds reasonably well through fifth grade, then drops sharply in sixth grade before recovering in eighth. Math follows a similar arc: fourth grade is a high point, third and fifth are in the mid-range, and sixth grade is weak. Eighth grade math comes in below half of students meeting standards, while seventh grade results in both ELA and math were suppressed by the state, likely because the grade is small enough to trigger privacy protections. Science proficiency, tested in fifth and eighth grades, sits in the mid-to-upper thirties for both. A parent looking at the sixth and seventh grade transition should ask the school directly what is happening academically at that stage.

Taken across all tested subjects and grades, the school's overall proficiency index places it in the top quartile relative to districts in Sutter County. That position is worth noting given the school's demographics and the size of its classrooms, though it is a school-to-district comparison within a single county, so context matters. Only one year of trend data is available for the current assessment framework, so it is not yet possible to say whether results are improving, holding, or slipping.

Graduation rate does not apply here because Encinal stops at eighth grade. There are no high school grades, so that metric is simply outside the school's scope.

The data does not include information on chronic absenteeism, IEP rates, English learner counts, course offerings, extracurricular programs, or staffing levels. Those are meaningful gaps for a family trying to assess student support services and enrichment, and a visit or conversation with the school would be the right way to fill them in. No district-level changes of lasting parent-relevant impact were found in publicly available sources for Live Oak Unified over roughly the past several years, so there is no recent policy shift or facilities change to flag for prospective families.

See more original research from School Decision →

Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 354%

School 54% · District 49% · ▲ 5 pts above district

▲ 11 pts above state median · ▲ 16 pts above county median

Grade 467%

School 67% · District 54% · ▲ 13 pts above district

▲ 29 pts above state median · ▲ 28 pts above county median

Grade 555%

School 55% · District 46% · ▲ 8 pts above district

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

Grade 620%

School 20% · District 34% · ▼ 14 pts below district

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

Grade 839%

School 39% · District 33% · ▲ 5 pts above district

▲ 11 pts above state median · ▲ 4 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 369%

School 69% · District 46% · ▲ 24 pts above district

▲ 29 pts above state median · ▲ 35 pts above county median

Grade 467%

School 67% · District 55% · ▲ 12 pts above district

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

Grade 555%

School 55% · District 54%

▲ 9 pts above state median · ▲ 10 pts above county median

Grade 627%

School 27% · District 60% · ▼ 33 pts below district

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

Grade 862%

School 62% · District 51% · ▲ 11 pts above district

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

Science

Grade 536%

School 36% · District 35% · ▲ 1 pts above district

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

Grade 839%

School 39% · District 35% · ▲ 4 pts above district

▲ 13 pts above state median · ▲ 10 pts above county median

Social studies

Grade 864%

School 64% · District 56% · ▲ 8 pts above district

▲ 15 pts above state median · ▲ 14 pts above county median

This schoolLive Oak 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.