12 public K-12 schools in North Highlands from NCES Common Core of Data: enrollment, grade span, demographics, and Civil Rights Data Collection statistics for every active campus.
National city placement
According to NCES CCD 2024-25, North Highlands has more public-school enrollment than 58% of the 4,487 US cities in this directory. North Highlands's average Resource Investment Index falls in the lower portion of the 4,487-city comparison set. The index is a resource snapshot, not an academic grade: it reflects the federal staffing, counselor, gifted-program, and attendance fields available for local campuses. The most useful next step is to open the individual schools below and identify which component is pulling each score down, because the same city average can hide very different campus-level constraints.
8 of North Highlands's 12 listed schools are elementary campuses. That composition means citywide enrollment and staffing averages are influenced more by early-grade operating patterns than by the city's 0 middle and 3 high-school records. Families comparing later grades should rely on those individual rows rather than the all-school mean.
North Highlands's reporting schools show 78.4% free-lunch eligibility across measured enrollment, alongside an average 20.9:1 student-teacher ratio. These are separate constraints: one describes the economic context of enrolled students and the other compares student and teacher headcounts. The 69-point gap between Pacific Career and Technology High and Oakdale Elementary is therefore more useful than the city mean alone. A school with a similar ratio may still report different counselor access, attendance, or gifted-program availability, so open the campus records before drawing conclusions about student support.
North Highlands school enrollment ranges from 69 students (lowest) to 778 students (highest), a spread of 709 students. That spread reflects typical urban portfolio variation between specialty programs and large neighbourhood schools. Per-school staffing and program breadth can differ sharply at opposite ends of that enrollment range, so the city average should not be treated as a typical campus.
Source: NCES Common Core of Data
The reported share is at least 75%, indicating a high concentration of measured economic need. Title I operates under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015), but its statutory allocation uses additional LEA-level counts and rules not represented by this average. This percentage is an economic-need context measure; it does not establish a Title I award, show dollars received, or describe how funds are distributed among campuses.
Source: NCES Common Core of Data
North Highlands's listed schools share one district boundary, budget authority, and reporting chain. That makes citywide and districtwide governance easier to compare, but it does not make individual campuses uniform: grade configuration, staffing, programs, and student need can still vary materially within the same school district.
Source: NCES Common Core of Data
student-teacher ratio is the simplest comparative metric but it does not capture the full picture: the ratio counts FTE classroom teachers against total enrollment, push-in specialists, English-language aides, special-education co-teachers, and counselors are not included in most reporting Higher values may reflect larger urban scale or recent resource constraints that have widened the gap.
| # | School | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Pacific Career and Technology High | 78 |
| 2. | Highlands High | 29 |
| 3. | Creative Connections Arts Academy | 26 |
| 4. | Miles P. Richmond | 26 |
| 5. | Kohler Elementary | 20 |
| 6. | Sierra View Elementary | 15 |
| 7. | Hillsdale Elementary | 15 |
| 8. | Warren a. Allison Elementary | 13 |
| 9. | Frederick Joyce Elementary | 12 |
| 10. | Madison Elementary | 10 |
| 11. | Oakdale Elementary | 9 |
| 12. | Village Elementary | 9 |
Ranked by the Simpson student-body diversity index (0-100) from NCES race and ethnicity data, where higher means a more evenly mixed student body. It measures mix, not quality.
Pacific Career and Technology High has the highest Resource Investment Index among the North Highlands schools in this federal-data comparison at 78/100. The index summarizes reported staffing, counseling, gifted-program, and attendance inputs; it is not an academic rating.
North Highlands has 12 public schools with a total enrollment of 5,298 students. 1 are charter schools. Average student-teacher ratio: 20.9:1.
Side-by-side: Compare any two schools or districts in California →
Data from NCES Common Core of Data (CCD) 2024-25 and Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) 2021-22. The Resource Investment Index uses reported student-teacher ratio, counselor access, gifted programs, and attendance; it is not an academic rating. Cities must include at least five schools to be listed. This public-data comparison is for informational purposes: verify current enrollment, attendance boundaries, and programs with the school district before acting. See the guide to understanding NCES data.
