The top reported proficiency rate is 56% in English language arts. The lowest is 19% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Raymond-knowles Elementary
Raymond-Knowles Elementary is a small K-8 school in the rural Sierra Nevada foothills community of Raymond, a sparsely populated unincorporated settlement in north-central Madera County. It is the only school in its district, so for families living in Raymond, this is the school. Transfers, charters, or alternatives would require a commute of meaningful distance through foothill terrain.
The school itself serves a very small enrollment spread across kindergarten through eighth grade, a configuration that places elementary and middle school students together in what is, by any measure, a tiny peer environment. Grade-level cohorts vary from a handful of students to perhaps a dozen at most. That intimacy can mean strong adult-to-student familiarity and multi-grade instruction, but it also means narrow peer breadth and very limited extracurricular infrastructure. Families weighing whether a small rural K-8 setting fits their child are the right judges of that tradeoff.
About half of enrolled students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, a meaningful share. The student body is roughly split between Hispanic and white students, with a smaller American Indian and Alaska Native population and a few students of two or more races.
On state assessments, the picture that emerges from available data is mixed, and a parent should hold it carefully because the school's very small grade cohorts mean that most grade-level results were suppressed by the state to protect student privacy. Only a few grades produced reportable results. In the grades where data were released, fifth-grade math and reading came in at roughly the lower-middle range, while eighth-grade English language arts was notably stronger, reaching well above the midpoint of the class. Eighth-grade math fell in the lower-middle range. Fifth-grade science was low. The school's overall proficiency index, which aggregates across tested subjects and grades, places it in the top quartile relative to other districts in Madera County. That positioning is worth knowing but should be read in context: Madera County's rural districts span a wide range, and the small cohorts here create real statistical noise from year to year. Trend data was not available; this is the first reported year in the dataset.
The district brief yielded no recent curriculum changes, bond measures, or operational shifts with lasting parent impact. A facilities bond was narrowly defeated years ago, and no subsequent replacement measure was found, so families with questions about the physical state of the building may want to ask the school directly.
Raymond as a community is cattle-ranching and granite-quarrying country. The Raymond-Knowles granite quarry, producing Sierra White granite, continues to operate and is part of the local economic fabric alongside surrounding rangeland agriculture. The town center along the old Southern Pacific right-of-way holds the Raymond Museum and a general store. There is no dense walkable street life; the federal classification for this location is rural and distant. The county library's nearest fixed branches are well outside of Raymond, though a county bookmobile serves outlying areas. Growth pressure in Madera County is concentrated far to the south along the Highway 41 corridor, not in Raymond itself, so the community is unlikely to see rapid enrollment shifts from new housing development in the near term.
Housing in the zip code serving Raymond carries a median home value meaningfully above the national midpoint but well below the California statewide median, and it has held roughly flat over the past year. Rental data for this area was not available.
Chronic absenteeism and graduation data were not applicable or available for this school. Because Raymond-Knowles ends at eighth grade, there is no graduation rate to report. Students completing eighth grade transition elsewhere for high school, and the data here says nothing about where they go or how they fare.
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