Orinda Schools stay strong in standardized tests!
Miramonte beats the odds and just keeps on improving
By
Hatti Hamlin
The Orinda News – February 2026
According to the latest Nation’s Report Card, put out by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, math and reading scores for high school seniors dropped to their lowest levels in more than two decades.
Which makes Miramonte High School’s recent student scores even more remarkable – they continued to improve to elite levels in the recent standardized California academic achievement assessments as well as other measures of performance.
And, said Acalanes Union School District Superintendent John Nickerson, Miramonte is one of the top high schools in the state in math and English.
The California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress tests, administered online to grade 11 students during the 2024-25 school year and reported in the fall, measured performance against the California Common Core Standards in English language arts and mathematics. The California Science Test compared performance with the Next Generation Science Standards.
“The last couple years, Miramonte has really … had some significant improvements,” said Nickerson. “Whereas our other schools have had a little up, a little down or flat … Miramonte has really gone up and is one of the top achieving schools in in the Bay Area.”
Miramonte was the only school in the district to improve its English scores year-over-year, and the only one to beat its 2021 results, when the effects of the pandemic began to show up in scores. Ninety percent of Miramonte students met or exceeded the core standards measure, compared to 49% of high schools statewide, and 81% districtwide.
In mathematics, Miramonte topped all other district schools, with 79% of students meeting or exceeding the core standards. That was nine points higher than the second highest school, Campolindo, and a significant improvement over its scores the prior year. Across California, just 37% of students met or exceeded the standards.
In both subject areas, the performance gap between ethnic and racial minorities and other students was significantly smaller at Miramonte than other schools in the district. Participation in both subject area assessments was above 95%, as was the district participation rate.
Students’ science scores at Miramonte were equally impressive, with 80% meeting or exceeding the standards. This compares to 65% of all students in the Acalanes district, and only 33% of all California students. Racial and ethnic performance gaps in science at Miramonte were smaller than at other schools.
Miramonte also led the district with the highest percentage of students meeting the University of California and California State University requirements, at 89.9%, and 80.5% receiving a Golden State Seal Merit Diploma, awarded to California high school graduates who demonstrate a superior level of academic performance across multiple subject areas. That compared to 81% of all district students meeting the UC/CSU requirements and 66% receiving the Golden State Merit designation.
Nickerson said the improvements at Miramonte were the result of targeted support for students who “are maybe just below the proficiency line … getting the students to take the test seriously and taking pride in the outcomes … a lot of our strongest students continue to just thrive and do well, but we still have a group of students who aren’t achieving, and so we’re putting a lot of work into trying to get them up.”
“We’re one of the highest performing districts in the state, but we know we can do better, and we’re still working at it – until every kid is at 100%, we’ve got work to do,” Nickerson said.
Nickerson added that the district – and Miramonte – scores are even more impressive viewed in the context of high participation rates.
“We don’t compare ourselves to some of those [other] districts where they’re 82% testing and 70% of their special ed are testing … when you look at participation, we’re one of the top, if not the top, English language arts in the state. And then our math is that top 10% tier,” he said. “Our math is not where our English Language Arts is, but Miramonte would be in those top few high schools for both.”
