Local desk · Education literacy
Start with the district that sits under Campbell’s elementary and middle schools. Then ask what “quality” has meant on California’s scoreboards for about twenty-five years. Then widen to Santa Clara County. The useful story is not a league table. It is how the yardsticks changed, what the published numbers actually say, and why averages in a rich valley still hide large gaps.
This page is about Campbell Union School District — often written Campbell Union ESD or CUSD — a K–8 elementary district in Santa Clara County. The California Department of Education school-profile page lists CDS code 43 69393 0000000, address 155 North Third Street, Campbell, grade span elementary, and superintendent Dr. Shelly Viramontez. Ed-Data repeats the same CDS (43-69393-0000000) and calls it an elementary school district, grades K–8.
The district’s own 2024–25 Local Control and Accountability Plan is the cleanest current self-description: twelve schools serving students from Campbell, San Jose, Santa Clara, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, and Saratoga — eight TK–5 schools, a TK–8 Spanish/English dual-language school, a TK–8 design-thinking school, and two grades 6–8 middle schools. That is a western Santa Clara Valley elementary–middle footprint, not a city-limits-only system.
There is no single published “25-year official table” on one CDE web page that this essay could copy without assembling files. The best continuous public series is the federal Common Core of Data (CCD) for NCES LEAID 0607200 (state ID 4369393), plus the current CDE / Ed-Data headcount. Those sources do not invent a smooth curve. They do show decline after a mid-2010s plateau.
| Year | Students | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2000–01 | 7,793 | NCES CCD |
| 2005–06 | 7,352 | NCES CCD |
| 2010–11 | 7,555 | NCES CCD |
| 2011–12 | 7,607 | CUSD LEA Plan (K–8) |
| 2015–16 | 7,600 | NCES CCD |
| 2017–18 | 7,298 | CUSD Citizens Oversight Committee |
| 2019–20 | 6,974 | NCES CCD |
| 2022–23 | 6,253 | NCES CCD |
| 2023–24 | 6,183 | NCES CCD / LCAP (March 2024) |
| 2024–25 | 6,120 | NCES CCD district detail |
| 2025–26 | 6,051 | CDE profile / Ed-Data |
From about 7,800 students at the start of the 2000s to about 6,050 in 2025–26 is a loss of roughly one student in five. The 2024–25 LCAP says the quiet part in administrative prose: the district is “continuing to experience declining enrollment.” That is a valley pattern as much as a campus story — housing cost, fewer school-age children in some neighborhoods, and families moving.
Demography moved while headcount fell. The May 2012 LEA Plan (Program Improvement Year 3) described a district that was still growing: 45.8% Hispanic/Latino, 31.2% White, 11.9% Asian, 4.9% African American, 2.7% Filipino; 43.3% English learners, 45% free or reduced-price lunch, 44.2% socioeconomically disadvantaged. The 2018–19 LCAP still said “more than 7,500” students: 47% Hispanic/Latino, 25% White, 15% Asian, 5% African American; 31% English learners; 43% free or reduced lunch.
By March 2024 the 2024–25 LCAP counted 6,183 students: 47% Hispanic, 21% White, 17% Asian or Pacific Islander, 4% Black/African American, and 11% not reported or mixed; 29% English learners, 42% free or reduced lunch, 12% with an IEP. The CDE 2025–26 profile puts English learners at 1,755 of 6,051 — 29.0%. CCD English-learner counts for earlier years are lumpy (1,761 in 2000–01; 2,523 in 2005–06; 2,403 in 2015–16; 1,812 in 2019–20) and should be read as federal reports, not as a perfect local census. The durable local sentence is simpler: Hispanic students have been about half the district for more than a decade; the White share fell; the Asian share rose; the English-learner share is lower than in the early 2010s but still near three in ten.
Those averages are not evenly spread. The same 2024–25 LCAP describes Rosemary School (396 students as of May 2024 DataZone): 84% Hispanic, 64.9% English learners, 85.1% socioeconomically disadvantaged. A district can be “diverse” on a pie chart and still be a set of very different schools.
California did not keep one yardstick from 2000 to 2025. If a headline compares an API from 2005 to a CAASPP percentage from 2024, the comparison is broken. This page uses three eras on purpose.
~1998–2013 · STAR / API
The Standardized Testing and Reporting program and the Academic Performance Index (API) were the public language of school quality in the 2000s. API condensed California Standards Tests and related exams into a 200–1000 scale. The statewide target was 800. Base and growth scores ran on a two-year cycle. Districts received API figures to satisfy federal No Child Left Behind rules. Ed-Data’s explainer is the calm vocabulary sheet.
2014– · Common Core / CAASPP
California adopted Common Core and replaced STAR with the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress. The Smarter Balanced exams in English language arts and mathematics (grades 3–8 and 11) report four achievement levels. “Met or exceeded” (levels 3 and 4) became the newspaper percentage. First operational year: 2014–15. The 2013 API reporting cycle was the last complete API era; CDE did not keep issuing a successor API on the old CST machine.
2017– · Dashboard + COVID gap
The California School Dashboard added status-and-change colors (and, for academics, distance from standard) on top of CAASPP. It is an accountability snapshot, not a second test. Spring 2020 statewide tests were not administered. 2020–21 testing was optional, with low and uneven participation; CDE has said those results should not be treated as a normal year-to-year comparison. Regular CAASPP reporting resumes in the 2021–22 files.
A fourth, research yardstick sits outside Sacramento’s scoreboard: the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA) on edopportunity.org. SEDA puts state tests onto a common grade-level scale relative to the 2019 national average. It is useful for long trends and subgroup gaps. It is still not a “quality of the school building” grade — average scores mix what happens in class with what students bring from home.
Campbell Union’s own May 2012 LEA Plan is the district-authored API record this page will use (rather than a third-party table that might belong to another “Union” district). CUSD wrote that the district API “has risen nearly 100 points since 2003 from 738 to 834,” that it surpassed the state goal of 800 in 2009, and that eight of twelve schools plus the district sat over 800, with the remaining four in the 700s. In 2009–10, the same plan says, the district grew 25 API points.
That is not a story of a failing system on the old index. It is also not a story of closed gaps. The same document says the district entered federal Program Improvement because of Students with Disabilities, Hispanic students, socioeconomically disadvantaged students, and English learners — “specifically in ELA” — and that “there remains a 35–40 percentage point gap between the lower performing and higher performing subgroups in both ELA and math.” English learners had grown “nearly 20 percentage points” over four years; students with disabilities had shown the least growth. The API could rise while AYP still failed the overlapping groups that live on the east side of the district’s map.
Official Smarter Balanced “at a glance” results for District: Campbell Union (CDS 43-69393, all grades, all students) are on the CDE/ETS CAASPP site. The figures below are that district file — not Campbell Union High, and not a single school. “Met or exceeded” is level 3 plus level 4, added from the published achievement-level shares.
| Spring | ELA met or exceeded | Math met or exceeded |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 48% | 42% |
| 2016 | 52% | 45% |
| 2017 | 53.4% | 48.3% |
| 2018 | 55.2% | 49.3% |
| 2019 | 57.8% | 51.6% |
| 2022 | 54.1% | 44.8% |
| 2023 | 53.3% | 44.8% |
| 2024 | 52.9% | 45.2% |
| 2025 | 51.4% | 46.2% |
Read as a multi-year pattern, not a single June headline. From the first CAASPP year through 2019, both subjects rose — ELA by about ten points, math by about ten. After the COVID hole, ELA came back to the mid-50s and then slipped a point or two a year through 2025. Math fell harder (51.6% in 2019 to 44.8% in 2022) and has only crawled back into the mid-46s. The 2024–25 LCAP, citing 2022–23 CAASPP, rounds the same district results to 53% ELA and 45% math and says academic performance is “begin[ning] to rebound to pre-pandemic levels.” The official series says rebound is partial, especially in math, and that ELA has not held the 2019 high.
The LCAP’s 2022–23 subgroup cut is the gap that the API era already named. District grades 3–8, meeting or exceeding:
ELA — overall 53%; Asian 85%; White 71%; Black 44%; Hispanic/Latino 32%; socioeconomically disadvantaged 31%; students with disabilities 15%; English learners 10%.
Math — overall 45%; Asian 83%; White 63%; Black 30%; Hispanic/Latino 22%; socioeconomically disadvantaged 22%; students with disabilities 16%; English learners 11%.
That is a 39-point ELA gap and a 41-point math gap between White and Hispanic/Latino students in the year the district chose as its LCAP baseline. Asian students sit far above the district mean; English learners and students with disabilities sit far below. The 2018 LCAP’s earlier cut (district-reported 2016–2018) already showed English learners in the high single digits to mid-teens and socioeconomically disadvantaged students stuck near 31% ELA / 23–26% math while the all-student line climbed. The gap is not a post-2020 invention.
Science, for completeness: the same LCAP lists 2022–23 CAST (grades 5 and 8) at 43% meeting or exceeding overall — 77% Asian, 67% White, 18% Hispanic/Latino, 21% socioeconomically disadvantaged, 2% English learners.
The Educational Opportunity Project’s April 2026 report Trends in Academic Performance in Campbell Union (SEDA version 2025.1, NCES 0607200) puts 2009–2025 grade 3–8 tests on a national grade-level scale. For 2022–25, Campbell Union students averaged 0.13 grade levels above the 2019 national average — above California (−0.72) but below the report’s “similar districts” average (0.62). The recent trend is negative: −0.10 grade levels per year since 2022, while California’s comparable trend was slightly positive.
Subgroup averages in that same 2022–25 window are the SEDA version of the LCAP gap: Asian +4.10 grade levels; White +1.88; Black −0.82; Hispanic −2.09; non-poor +1.89; poor −2.13. Nationally the district ranked about the 63rd percentile in math and the 68th in reading for average scores — and only the 19th percentile for learning rates (0.80 grade levels of skill gained per year versus a national 1.0). SEDA treats learning rates as a better school-quality clue than raw averages, because averages include out-of-school opportunity. On that clue, Campbell Union looks weaker than its score rank.
Chronic absenteeism in the same report (AEI / Malkus series): 5.1% in 2017–19, 14.1% in 2022–25 (+9.0 points). Still below California (11.8% to 24.1%), and still a break from the pre-COVID habit. The LCAP names the same problem: absenteeism is improving and still higher than before the pandemic.
Dashboard colors in the 2024–25 LCAP are local management language, not a second test: no school overall Red in ELA or math; English Learner Progress Red for the district; Students with Disabilities Red in ELA and math; Hispanic students Red in ELA. That is the accountability system pointing at the same groups the 2012 LEA Plan already had in Program Improvement.
Santa Clara County’s public averages sit above the state’s. They do not dissolve the gap.
The Santa Clara County Office of Education, reporting spring 2023 CAASPP (release 19 October 2023), said 59% of county students met or exceeded in ELA and 51% in math, against statewide figures of 47% and 35% — twelve and seventeen points higher. English learners in the county met or exceeded at 15% in ELA. SCCOE’s own sentence on the rest of the cut: students identified as Asian, White, or Two or More Races (or as not English learners, not socioeconomically disadvantaged, or not students with disabilities) “continue to experience rates significantly above the countywide average.” The release did not publish a Latino percentage in that paragraph. This page will not invent one.
On 14 November 2025 SCCOE summarized the 2025 Dashboard: county students at 59.8% ELA, 53.2% math, 47.6% science versus statewide 48.8%, 37.3%, and 32.7%. Chronic absenteeism 15.3% in the county versus 19.4% in the state. The county still outperforms the state. The 2023 gap language still applies: the average is not the distribution.
A separate county literacy cut — third-grade ELA — appears in San José State University’s Human Rights Institute Silicon Valley Pain Index 2024: 69% of White students, 79% of Asian students, 41% of Pacific Islander students, 38% of African American students, and 29% of Latinx students in Santa Clara County meeting or exceeding the third-grade English standard. That is not a Campbell Union figure. It is the South Bay pattern in one grade that predicts later reading trouble if it does not move.
Statewide, CDE’s 8 October 2025 assessment release put 2024–25 CAASPP at 48.8% ELA and 37.3% math (up from 47.0% and 35.5% in 2023–24). Hispanic/Latino students statewide: 38.8% ELA and 25.7% math in 2024–25, up from 36.8% and 23.7%. Those are California numbers. They explain why a county that beats the state can still have a large Latino gap: the state floor is low, and the valley’s Asian and White scores pull the county mean up.
Campbell Union’s own 2022–23 all-student rates (53% ELA, 45% math in the LCAP rounding; 53.3% and 44.8% on the dashboard) sit below the 2023 county averages SCCOE published (59% / 51%) and nearer the state. That is what a mixed K–8 district in a high-scoring county looks like when it is not Cupertino or Los Altos. It is not a ranking of towns. It is a reminder that “South Bay schools are strong” is an average with a long tail.
Test trends are a literacy. They are not the whole child, and they are not the housing market. A few neighboring facts belong next to the tables.
Housing and the tech wage split. Joint Venture Silicon Valley’s October 2024 affordability brief, using California Association of Realtors September 2024 statistics, put the median existing single-family sale at about $1.9 million in Santa Clara County — more than double the statewide median ($868,100) and more than four times the U.S. median ($416,700). Estimated first-time-buyer affordability in the county: 25% in Q2 2024, down 17 points over a decade. Hispanic/Latino households able to afford a median-priced single-family home: 8% in Santa Clara County. The 2025 Silicon Valley Index adds the income sentence: White residents’ per capita income about $157,000 versus about $37,000 for Hispanic or Latino residents; average multifamily rent $3,210; nearly half of Silicon Valley renters spending more than 30% of income on rent. Families who can buy time — tutoring, summer programs, stable address — show up in test averages. Families who cannot show up in FRPM counts and in the SEDA “poor” line.
English learners and LCFF. California’s 2013 Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) replaced most categorical silos with a base grant plus extra dollars for “unduplicated” pupils — English learners, low-income students, foster youth — and required an LCAP. Campbell Union’s plans are the local paper trail of that era: dual-language and design-thinking programs, TK expansion, reading specialists, EL progress as a Red dashboard indicator, newcomer influx noted in 2023–24. The English-learner share fell from the low-40s in the 2012 LEA Plan to 29% in 2025–26, which can mean reclassification, demographic change, or both. It does not mean the remaining English learners closed the CAASPP gap (10–11% met or exceeded in the 2022–23 LCAP cut).
Pandemic loss and recovery. The missing 2020 tests are a hole, not a zero. National and California research (SEDA; CDE’s own 2021 caveat) treat 2020–21 as disruption: remote instruction, uneven participation, later chronic absenteeism. Campbell Union’s official CAASPP line is the local version — 2019 peak, 2022 drop especially in math, then a flat-to-soft ELA and a slow math crawl. SEDA’s learning-rate rank (19th percentile) and −0.10 grade-level-per-year trend since 2022 say recovery is not the same as “back.” Literacy here means: learning loss was real, recovery is uneven, and the groups who were behind in 2012 were still the Red groups on the 2023 Dashboard.
What scores leave out. Arts, climate, counselors, preschool access, a dual-language pathway, whether a child is housed — none of that is a Smarter Balanced achievement level. The LCAP spends pages on those things because the state asked districts to. This essay does not convert them into a second ranking.
Disclaimer. Educational literacy only. Not a ranking of schools, not advice about where to enroll a child, and not an evaluation of any teacher, principal, or board. Test scores are incomplete measures of quality. API, CAASPP, Dashboard colors, and SEDA grade-level units are different instruments; they are not interchangeable. 2020 had no statewide CAASPP; 2021 was optional and is omitted here. Enrollment and demographic figures come from the named public files — they were not estimated. Campbell Union School District (K–8, CDS 43-69393) is not Campbell Union High School District (CDS 43-69401). Official CDE, CAASPP, Dashboard, and district LCAP pages beat any essay if the numbers later revise.