Summary:
North Monterey County Center for Independent Study is an alternative public school in Salinas, California, serving 168 students in grades K-12. The school is part of the North Monterey County Unified School District, which is ranked 1,331 out of 1,568 districts in the state and has a 1-star rating from SchoolDigger.
The school has seen significant improvements in recent years, with its four-year graduation rate increasing from 62.0% in 2019-2020 to 89.6% in 2022-2023, outperforming the district's overall graduation rate. Additionally, the school's dropout rate has decreased from 20.7% in 2018-2019 to 4.2% in 2022-2023, and it has made impressive strides in reducing chronic absenteeism, from 49.8% in 2017-2018 to 0.0% in 2022-2023. However, the school's test scores in English Language Arts, Mathematics, and Science remain lower than the district and state averages, with only 34.38% of 11th-grade students proficient or better in ELA, compared to 48.78% for the district and 55.73% for the state.
When compared to nearby schools, such as Big Sur Charter and Monterey County Home Charter, North Monterey County Center for Independent Study generally underperforms in terms of test scores and graduation rates. Additionally, some of the nearby schools, like PVUSD Virtual Academy, have much lower chronic absenteeism rates. The school's high student-teacher ratio, ranging from 23.3 to 24.5, may be a contributing factor to its lower academic performance, and the high percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch, ranging from 67.78% to 73.21%, suggests that the school serves a population with significant socioeconomic challenges, which may also impact academic outcomes.
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