Brookside Elementary, Lake Forest Park WA

Original Research by School Decision on Brookside Elementary

Brookside Elementary is a regular public school in the Shoreline School District, serving kindergarten through fifth grade in Lake Forest Park. It is a mid-sized elementary school for its grade band, and a little under a third of its students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a measure of family economic circumstances.

In state testing for the most recent school year, Brookside’s results show a clear pattern. English language arts proficiency was solid across the tested grades, with third and fifth graders performing at levels that would be considered strong while fourth graders were somewhat lower. Math proficiency declined steadily by grade level: third graders performed well, fourth graders were in the middle, and fifth graders were notably lower. In science, which is tested only in fifth grade, students posted a result that was solidly above the midpoint. On a combined index of proficiency across all subjects and grades, Brookside ranked in the top quarter among elementary schools in King County districts. This is a school where early elementary literacy is a clear strength and math is an area families should be aware of, particularly as students move through the grades.

The student body is predominantly white, with a significant share of students who identify as two or more races, a modest Hispanic population, and smaller shares of Asian and Black students. Data on the proportion of students receiving special education services or classified as English learners was not available in the source material; a parent may want to ask the school about these supports directly.

Lake Forest Park is a small, residential city northeast of Seattle that was one of the area’s first planned communities. It was developed with single-family homes on medium to large lots, and its commercial activity is concentrated almost entirely in one place: the Lake Forest Park Town Center, an 18-acre complex that contains city hall, the police department, a library, a community center, a bookstore, and roughly forty small businesses. There is no industrial zone and very little commercial zoning outside this center. The city is largely car-dependent, though the Burke-Gilman Trail runs along the lake shore through town and provides a major walking and biking link to Seattle and Kenmore. The city grew significantly through annexations in the 1990s, but its zoning remains overwhelmingly residential, and no major new housing developments were identified in publicly available information. Brookside sits on its own campus away from the Town Center.

The Shoreline School District, meanwhile, has recently completed significant facility upgrades. A school construction bond funded the rebuilding of Kellogg Middle School, which reopened in 2022, and the demolition and rebuilding of Parkwood Elementary, which opened in 2023. In 2022, voters approved two replacement levies, one for operations and enrichment and another for technology and building repairs, which together sustain core programming, special education, transportation, and extracurriculars without raising new taxes. These are the major parent-relevant changes in the district.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 372%

School 72% · District 71%

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

Grade 459%

School 59% · District 64% · ▼ 5 pts below district

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

Grade 548%

School 48% · District 61% · ▼ 13 pts below district

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

English language arts

Grade 370%

School 70% · District 67% · ▲ 2 pts above district

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

Grade 457%

School 57% · District 63% · ▼ 6 pts below district

▲ 8 pts above state median · even with county median

Grade 575%

School 75% · District 72% · ▲ 4 pts above district

▲ 22 pts above state median · ▲ 12 pts above county median

Science

Grade 569%

School 69% · District 71% · ▼ 2 pts below district

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

This schoolShoreline School District, 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-income42%Higher-income83%40 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income47%Higher-income85%38 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income58%Higher-income82%24 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income45%Higher-income85%40 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income63%Higher-income80%17 pp gap