Palm Desert High
Palm Desert · CA · Desert Sands Unified · Public
Similar nearby schools
Most similar nearby schools
Horizon → Summit High (Continuation) → Desert Christian Academy → Xavier College Preparatory High School → La Quinta High → Shadow Hills High → Palm Valley School → Indio High →📋 At a glance
- 📚 21 AP courses offered — Elite
- ✅ Dual-enrollment program (college credit while in HS)
- ✅ Gifted & talented program
- 🔢 4 calculus classes · 20 physics · 19 chemistry
- 🎓 AP rigor: Top 3.7% of US high schools
- 📝 SAT/ACT participation: 56th percentile by test-taker volume
- 🎓 4-yr grad rate: 98% (Top 2.3% of US high schools by 4-yr grad rate)
Composed from federal CRDC offerings, EDFacts ACGR, and other public data. Full breakdowns below.
How Palm Desert High compares for families
Among the nation's most academically rigorous high schools.
- ▸ StatewideAP rigor sits in the top 3.7% of US high schools with 21 AP courses.
- ▸ LocallyCA trails the US average on NAEP 8th-grade math (−4 points). Stronger local schools matter even more.
- ▸ vs Similar SchoolsThe closest comparables nearby: Horizon, Summit High (Continuation), Desert Christian Academy and 5 more. See the sidebar to compare side-by-side.
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🎓 Academic rigor
AP + advanced-course offerings
Elite — exceptional AP + advanced course breadth
Top 3.7% of US high schools
✅ Gifted/talented program
Source: federal Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC 2020-21). CRDC reports what's offered + enrolled — it doesn't collect AP exam pass rates (College Board owns that data and doesn't release it school-level).
SAT / ACT participation
CRDC federal data · 2020-2156th percentile by test-taker volume
Source: federal Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC 2020-21). Volume — not score — is what's reported here. A higher count means more students at this school are entering the college admissions pipeline. Note: 2020-21 was COVID-disrupted; some districts (especially those that stayed remote longer) report unusually low or zero takers.
🎓 4-year graduation rate · federal EDFacts
What % of students graduate on time?
Top 2.3% of US high schools by 4-yr grad rate
Source: federal EDFacts ACGR (Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate), 2019 vintage via Urban Institute. EDFacts publishes a range (low-high) to preserve privacy on small cohorts; we display the midpoint.
👩🏫 Teacher workforce · federal CRDC
Teacher experience & reliability
Source: federal Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC 2017-18 — the most recent vintage that publishes per-school teacher quality fields; the 2020-21 sweep had them suppressed). "Inexperienced" = teachers in their first or second year. "Chronic absence" = teachers absent 10+ days/year.
🏛️ Federal Title I context
Title I Schoolwide eligible
≥40% FRPL — qualifies for Title I Schoolwide program
40-74% of students qualify for free/reduced lunch. The district can use Title I funds across the whole school under federal Schoolwide Program rules.
Source: NCES Common Core of Data, free/reduced-price lunch eligibility. The actual Title I designation is a district decision and may differ from eligibility — but the federal eligibility math is what we show here. We don't claim to assert whether the district formally chose to enroll this school in Title I.
Counselor capacity
Source: U.S. Department of Education, Civil Rights Data Collection 2020-2021. Counselor ratio = the school's most recent total enrollment ÷ counselor FTE. The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) recommends a 250:1 maximum; the US national median across schools with on-staff counselors is roughly 430:1.
Enrollment trend & projection
Total enrollment + grade 12, NCES Common Core of Data (2021–2024).
If the recent trend holds…
At its recent rate of -0.7%/year, projecting from 2024's 2,079 students:
≈ 70 fewer students by 2029 — a real revenue/relevance risk worth getting ahead of.
An extrapolation of the recent trajectory, not a forecast of the school's plans; ignores one-off shocks.
Revenue at risk
At $17,722 per student in district revenue, the 70 students projected to be lost by 2029 represent ≈ $1,240,540/year in funding at risk.
District total revenue ÷ enrollment, NCES F-33. Public funding largely follows enrollment, so a shrinking class is a recurring budget hit.
Nearby high schools — the local competition
The closest high schools families here also consider, and where their enrollment is heading.
| School | Type | Miles | HS enrollment | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Horizon La Quinta |
Public | 3.3 | 198 | -21.1% |
| Summit High (Continuation) La Quinta |
Public | 3.3 | 195 | +22.6% |
| Desert Christian Academy Bermuda Dunes |
Private | 3.7 | 534 | +18.4% |
| Xavier College Preparatory High School Palm Desert |
Private | 4.1 | 559 | +0.2% |
| La Quinta High La Quinta |
Public | 4.7 | 2,425 | -6.1% |
| Shadow Hills High Indio |
Public | 5.5 | 1,650 | -15.5% |
| Palm Valley School Rancho Mirage |
Private | 6.3 | 241 | -12.4% |
| Indio High Indio |
Public | 7.0 | 1,962 | -2.7% |