SLO County test scores inch toward pre-pandemic levels. See your district’s results
Pandemic-related learning loss is still taking a toll on San Luis Obispo County school districts, five years after COVID-19 disrupted traditional learning environments.
That’s according to the latest standardized test results, which showed most local districts still testing below pre-pandemic levels even as scores trend upward, overall.
The test results released by the state on Thursday were based on the California Smarter Balanced assessments from spring 2025. The exams are administered annually to students in third through eighth and 11th grades, and are meant to measure students’ progress compared to the state’s English language arts and math standards.
Despite the fact that most schools haven’t surpassed their pre-COVID scores, SLO County is still out-performing statewide results.
Across the county, 54.2% of students met or exceeded English language arts standards, while 40.7% met or exceeded math standards, according to 2025 test results found on the state’s database.
Statewide, only 48.8% of students met English language arts standards, and 37.3% of students met math standards, the database showed.
Most SLO County districts made progress last school year. Some districts, like Atascadero and San Miguel, even managed to pass their pre-COVID results on one test or another.
But other districts fell even farther behind. Coast Unified in Cambria, for example, lost points on both the math and English tests.
Countywide, the 2025 scores also showed that achievement gaps persisted among certain student groups across the county, emphasizing the roadblocks that can impede learning among students who are socioeconomically disadvantaged or homeless.
San Luis Coastal saw mixed results. The district saw high test scores overall, out-performing other comparable districts — but it also saw a decrease in math scores along with significant achievement gaps, and the district still wasn’t able to boost scores above pre-pandemic levels.
Lisa Yamashita, the district’s assistant superintendent for education services, told The Tribune that there are many reasons why it’s hard to get scores back up.
“One reason that’s likely our scores have not reached pre-COVID scores is that the demographics of our student body has changed,” Yamashita said over email. “We have increased the number of students in poverty by 600 students and our students with disabilities have increased by 500 students since 2019-2020. Furthermore, we’re still experiencing the changes in childhood that smartphones and screen time are having on linguistic and social developments.”
Yamashita said the district is hoping to move the needle over the next year by focusing on professional development for teachers and by identifying students who may need extra support or intervention to get their scores up.
See SLO County standardized test results by district
Most districts across California are still testing below their 2019 scores, according to EdSource — and that trend extends to SLO County.
Locally, test scores dropped after the pandemic.
Between 2019 and 2022, countywide English scores dipped 5.5 percentage points, while math scores dropped by 7 percentage points in that same time, The Tribune previously reported.
Since in-person learning resumed, it’s been an uphill battle for educators to get students back on track — and this year’s test scores show the battle is ongoing.
Overall, however, districts are making slow progress.
In 2025, countywide scores improved by just over 2 percentage points in English and just over 1 percentage point in math, according to state data. Results were mixed from district to district.
In math, the Shandon school district saw the largest year-to-year jump, with scores improving by more than 11 percentage points compared to 2023-24, a Tribune analysis found. But Shandon still had the lowest overall math score, with just 22.7% of students meeting standards.
Several districts, including Cayucos Elementary, Coast Unified, Pleasant Valley, San Luis Coastal and Templeton saw a decrease in their 2025 math scores.
Despite the decrease, San Luis Coastal saw 56.1% of students meet or exceed math standards — the highest overall percentage of any SLO County district. Templeton’s percentage was 38.5%, according to state data.
Meanwhile, Atascadero, Lucia Mar, Paso Robles, San Miguel and Shandon all improved their scores, state data showed.
In San Miguel, 38.1% of students met or exceeded math scores, an increase of 3.7 percentage points from the previous year. That boosted the district past its pre-pandemic math scores by 1.6 percentage points, a Tribune analysis found.
San Miguel superintendent Karen Grandoli said in a statement that the improvement was owed to a few key initiatives, including a new math program adopted in 2023, expanded teacher training and helping students explore multiple methods to solve problems.
As for the rest of the large SLO County districts, Atascadero saw 40.1% of students meet or exceed math standards, compared to 38.6% in Lucia Mar and 30% in Paso Robles.
Meanwhile, most SLO County districts saw improved scores on the English language arts exams.
In Atascadero, 52% of students met or exceeded English standards — the same share as the district’s pre-pandemic results.
Shandon was also able to surpass its pre-COVID English scores, with 33.1% of students meeting or exceeding standards in 2025 compared to 32% in 2019.
San Luis Coastal saw the highest English results out of the large SLO County districts, with 67.1% of students meeting or exceeding standards compared to 55.2% in Lucia Mar, 43.9% in Paso Robles and 56.8% in Templeton.
Meanwhile, Pleasant Valley saw the largest drop. The tiny North County elementary school district dropped 10 percentage points, with 54.5% of students meeting or exceeding English standards in 2025 compared to 65.5% in 2024, according to the state data.
SLO County sees major achievement gaps
SLO County had one of the state’s highest rates of homeless students last school year — and those students, by and large, performed worse on their standardized tests than non-homeless students.
And while homeless students in SLO County did out-perform homeless students statewide, the achievement gaps between homeless and non-homeless test-takers in SLO County were wider in both math and English than those at the state level.
Countywide, 30% of homeless students met or exceeded English standards, compared to 57% of non-homeless students, state data showed. That amounts to a nearly 27-percentage-point gap between homeless and non-homeless English test-takers, a Tribune analysis found.
At the state level, that same gap was just below 23 percentage points, even though state scores were lower for both groups.
In math, 18.1% of SLO County homeless students met or exceeded standards, compared to 43.5% of non-homeless students — a 25.3-percentage-point gap. The achievement gap at the state level was 20.6 points, data showed.
The county-level achievement gap highlights the fact that circumstance and home life can impact a student’s ability to learn.
The homeless student scores varied by district, with all districts seeing significant gaps in math.
San Luis Coastal had the largest achievement gaps, with a 33.5-point gap in math and a 30.6-point gap in English, data showed. At the same time, San Luis Coastal had a higher percentage of homeless students who met or exceeded math and English standards compared to most other districts.
San Miguel was the only SLO County district that came close to closing its homeless student achievement gap in English, data showed. The district had only a 0.7-percentage-point gap, with 38% of homeless students meeting or exceeding English standards compared to 38.7% of non-homeless students.
The district didn’t come close to closing its gap in math scores, but it did boast the highest percentage of homeless students — 30.5% — who met or exceeded math standards out of all the SLO County districts.
In a statement, superintendent Grandoli said targeted summer school and after-school programming helped the district work toward closing achievement gaps. Similarly, high attendance rates contributed to the improvements across the district, she said.
“We are proud of our students, staff, and families for their hard work and dedication,” Grandoli said. “These gains show what is possible when we focus on high-quality instruction, support every learner, and work together as a community.”
This story was originally published October 15, 2025 at 10:00 AM.
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