Cottage Hill Elementary, Grass Valley CA

Original Research by School Decision on Cottage Hill Elementary

Cottage Hill Elementary serves kindergarten through fifth grade in Grass Valley, a small Sierra foothills city that mixes a historic Gold Rush downtown with newer residential neighborhoods. The school enrolls students from a community where healthcare, retail, education, and technology are the economic anchors, and where Loma Rica Ranch, a major residential development, is bringing significant housing growth to the area.

The school's academic profile shows proficiency in the tested grades and subjects for the 2024-25 school year. In math, students in fourth grade show stronger proficiency than those in third or fifth grade; in English language arts, fourth and fifth graders perform comparably and slightly better than third graders. Science testing in fifth grade reflects a lower proficiency rate. Across all tested subjects and grades, Cottage Hill's overall proficiency index falls below the midpoint among other districts in Nevada County. This means families may want to look into further detail with the school about the approaches being used to boost student achievement, particularly in the upper grades where some results dip.

Demographically, the school reflects the composition of its community. Most students are white. A modest share identify as Hispanic. The student body is racially diverse in smaller numbers across other groups. About one-third of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, placing the school in a mixed-income community but with material economic need present. The school has an enrollment of roughly equal cohorts across the grade span, with the smallest enrollment in first grade and the largest in the kindergarten and fifth-grade classes.

The school is part of Pleasant Ridge Union Elementary School District, a small district that has been shaped by two recent developments. In November 2024, voters rejected a school bond that would have funded classroom upgrades, roof repairs, restroom improvements, and safety enhancements to pick-up and drop-off zones. This leaves Cottage Hill and other district schools operating with deferred capital needs. More positively, the district board approved expansion of its Arete Charter Academy to add a high school beginning in August 2025, creating a district-wide K-12 school-choice option with blended learning, Sierra College dual enrollment, and career and technical education pathways.

Cottage Hill's Kingston Lane location places it on a separated school campus, not within the walkable downtown core where most of Grass Valley's civic institutions cluster. Families in the area drive primarily, with most commuting alone. The broader Grass Valley community has a strong historic downtown centered on Mill Street, now a pedestrian plaza, but residential neighborhoods and schools are generally distributed away from that center.

The housing market in the zip code has homes valued in the mid-range relative to state benchmarks, and affordability is mixed: mortgage costs run higher than national norms, but rents are more moderate. The Loma Rica Ranch development, the largest housing project in Grass Valley's history, is accelerating construction in 2025 and is expected to bring new families to the area, which may shift school enrollment and community demographics in coming years.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 343%

School 43% · District 45% · ▼ 2 pts below district

even with state median · ▼ 9 pts below county median

Grade 453%

School 53% · District 54% · ▼ 1 pts below district

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

Grade 530%

School 30% · District 36% · ▼ 6 pts below district

even with state median · ▼ 2 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 333%

School 33% · District 38% · ▼ 5 pts below district

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

Grade 448%

School 48% · District 54% · ▼ 6 pts below district

▲ 6 pts above state median · ▼ 5 pts below county median

Grade 547%

School 47% · District 47%

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

Science

Grade 533%

School 33% · District 36% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▲ 4 pts above state median · ▼ 10 pts below county median

This schoolPleasant Ridge Union 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.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 3Lower-income24%Higher-income40%16 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income40%Higher-income52%12 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income27%Higher-income56%29 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income32%Higher-income51%19 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income44%Higher-income57%13 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income12%Higher-income39%27 pp gap