Independence High School
📄 Shareable scorecard →Compare with peers
Most similar nearby schools
Piedmont Hills High School → Silver Creek High School → Santa Teresa High School → Evergreen Valley High School → Homestead High School → Compare all similar →Enrollment trend & projection
If this trend holds (-3.3%/yr, Total enrollment)
At per-pupil funding of $ / student:
| Horizon | Projected Total enrollment | Change | Funding impact / yr |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 yr (2027) | ~2,156 | -73 | $0 |
| 3 yr (2029) | ~2,016 | -213 | $0 |
| 5 yr (2031) | ~1,885 | -344 | $0 |
Straight-line extrapolation of the recent annual rate — a what-if, not a forecast of intent. Default = California's LCFF base grant for grades 9–12 ($12,423/ADA). Edit the figure to match your school.
Enrollment stability & demand — 2024-25
Two complementary signals: retention (do students stay once enrolled?) and demand (are families choosing the school?). Read against the Santa Clara County baseline — the demographic tide is moving every CA HS, so a school's gap vs. county is the actionable signal.
Enrollment -23.7% vs. county -6.2% AND stability (87.3%) below the county median. Recruitment and retention both under pressure — likely a foundational rather than tactical problem.
315 of 2,477 students who enrolled at Independence High School this year didn't maintain continuous enrollment (12.7% non-stability). Mid-year transfers, dropouts, and other exits are all counted.
Stability by student group
Nearest peer high schools
Source: California Department of Education, Stability Rate 2024-25. Benchmarks limited to non-virtual public & charter HS with ≥100 cumulative enrollees so by-design-high-churn continuation schools don't dominate the bottom of the distribution. Cumulative enrollment counts every student on the rolls during the year, so it can exceed peak-day enrollment.
Chronic absenteeism — 2024-25
Share of students missing 10% or more of expected attendance — the leading indicator that often precedes the demand decline shown above. Families disengaging tend to raise absenteeism first, then formally leave. Basis: grades 9–12.
Absenteeism is up 7.3 pp since 2016-17. A rising absenteeism trend often precedes formal departure — worth investigating which subgroups are driving it.
Source: California Department of Education, Chronic Absenteeism 2024-25. Benchmarks limited to non-virtual public & charter HS with ≥100 eligible students. CDE didn't publish a usable 2019-20 file (COVID).
SBAC academic outcomes — grade 11, 2025
Share of grade-11 students meeting or exceeding the California standard on Smarter Balanced ELA and Math. This is the academic-readiness signal that pairs with UC Reach (post-grad outcomes), stability (retention), and absenteeism (engagement). Note: statewide median Math is only ~20% — a school at 20% isn't an outlier; one at 45%+ genuinely is.
Source: California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) Smarter Balanced research files. Benchmarks limited to non-virtual public & charter HS with ≥30 tested students.
Student composition — 2025-26
HS grades 9–12 racial/ethnic composition and program subgroups, from CDE Census Day Enrollment. Two-year shift shown when ≥1 pt — surfaces how the community served has changed since 2023-24.
Race / ethnicity
Program subgroups
Source: California Department of Education, Census Day Enrollment 2025-26 (HS grades 9–12). Δ shown when shift is ≥1 pt since 2023-24. Categories below 0.5% omitted.
District financial profile — East Side Union High (FY2020)
From 4 years of NCES F-33 filings (the federally-mandated district finance survey). Public schools don't have their own books — the district does. These figures show the financial scale, revenue dependence, instruction-vs-overhead mix, and long-term debt that shape what a school can sustain.
Local: 51.7%
Federal: 7.1%
Source: NCES F-33 Annual Survey of School System Finances (Urban Institute Education Data API). Latest year currently published: FY2020. F-33 is a district-level federal filing — it reflects the East Side Union High as a whole, not this individual school's books. Revenue mix shows where the district's dollars come from (state aid dominates in CA via LCFF). Instruction share is current expenditure on instruction ÷ total current expenditure (national benchmark ~60%). Long-term debt is end-of-year outstanding (mostly facilities bonds).
-13.1 pp vs. peer median (30.1%) · Ranked #11 of 11 similar schools
18.5%
30.1%
53.3%
17.0%
Higher than 46% of California high schools (1105 ranked, ≥50 seniors)
Independence High School's UC Reach of 17.0% is below the California median (18.5%). The top 10% of CA schools achieve 53.3% or higher.
But in Santa Clara County, where the local median is 33.1% and the top-10% bar is 79.3%, this score is mid-pack rather than exceptional — typical of its market rather than a standout.
For context, the elite tier (top 1%) clears 102.7% — a gap of 86 pp from where this school sits.
Overall, Independence High School's UC Reach is higher than 46% of California high schools (1105 ranked).
Independence High School — Enrollment & Outcomes Snapshot
Public · San Jose · vs. 10 most similar nearby schools
- ▸On UC Reach, Independence High School sits near the bottom of its similar-school group (ranked #11 of 11): 17% vs. a peer median of 30%.
- ▸Its UC Reach has held roughly steady since 2018.
- ▸Senior-class enrollment is down 24% (754→575 from 2018 to 2026), trailing the peer-group median of -7%.
- ▸At its recent rate (-3.3%/yr), enrollment projects to ~2016 by 2029 — about 213 fewer students than today.
Enrollment projection
That's about 213 fewer students. At per-student funding of $ per student, that's roughly $0 in annual state funding at risk.
Default = California's LCFF base grant for grades 9–12 ($12,423 per ADA) — adjust to your district's actual per-pupil figure. Projection extrapolates the recent annual rate — not a forecast of intent.
Your school vs. its 10 most similar nearby schools
| School | Type | Size | UC Reach | Enroll. trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Independence High School | Public | 2229 | 17.0% | -24% |
| Peer-group median | 30.1% | -7% | ||
| Piedmont Hills High School | Public | 1866 | 31.0% | -15% |
| Silver Creek High School | Public | 2057 | 28.2% | -16% |
| Santa Teresa High School | Public | 2205 | 27.5% | -1% |
| Evergreen Valley High School | Public | 2734 | 43.5% | -8% |
| Homestead High School | Public | 2190 | 54.6% | -1% |
| Yerba Buena High School | Public | 1555 | 33.6% | -5% |
| Milpitas High School | Public | 2895 | 29.3% | -8% |
| Fremont High | Public | 2015 | 24.1% | +4% |
| Abraham Lincoln High | Public | 1575 | 17.6% | -17% |
| Branham High School | Public | 1819 | 33.1% | +30% |
UC Reach = top-6 UC admits ÷ senior class (can exceed 100% when students are admitted to multiple campuses). Enrollment trend = first-to-latest grade-12 change on file. Similar schools matched on proximity, size, type. Methodology →
Admit rate vs. CA peer average, by campus ⓘ
How does this school's admit rate at each UC compare to other CA schools whose applicant pool averages the same GPA?
| Campus | Applicant GPA (avg) | Actual admit rate | CA peer avg | Δ | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UC Berkeley | 3.98 | 7.7% | 12.3% | -4.6pp | On target |
| UCLA | 3.98 | 7.2% | 9.2% | -1.9pp | On target |
| UC San Diego | 3.94 | 22.8% | 21.4% | +1.4pp | On target |
| UC Santa Barbara | 3.92 | 33.9% | 29.0% | +4.9pp | On target |
| UC Irvine | 3.95 | 10.3% | 24.6% | -14.4pp | Under |
| UC Davis | 3.93 | 48.4% | 32.4% | +15.9pp | Over |
Where Independence High School sits vs. all California schools ⓘ
Overall, this school admits its UC applicants in line with what their GPAs predict (22.3% actual vs. 21.8% expected).
UC Outcomes Trend — 2018–2025
Class size from CDE grade 12 enrollment. Campus-level data — applicant/admit totals may count a student at multiple campuses more than once.
Campus Breakdown — 2025
| Campus | Applicants | Admits | Enrollees | Admit Rate | UC Reach | Yield | Avg GPA (App) | Avg GPA (Adm) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UC Berkeley → Elite | 78 | 6 | 3 | 7.7% | 1.0% | 50.0% | 3.98 | 4.21 |
| UCLA → Elite | 69 | 5 | — | 7.2% | 0.8% | — | 3.98 | 4.28 |
| UC San Diego → Selective | 79 | 18 | 8 | 22.8% | 3.0% | 44.4% | 3.94 | 4.24 |
| UC Santa Barbara → Selective | 62 | 21 | — | 33.9% | 3.5% | — | 3.92 | 4.25 |
| UC Irvine → Selective | 78 | 8 | — | 10.3% | 1.3% | — | 3.95 | 4.23 |
| UC Davis → | 91 | 44 | 14 | 48.4% | 7.3% | 31.8% | 3.93 | 4.18 |