REEDLEY – Ten years ago, just 21% of Kings Canyon Unified School District students were meeting or exceeding state standards in math. By the 2024-25 school year, that percentage had doubled.
This means around 2,000 more students were demonstrating they understood grade-level knowledge and skills for a total of 42% — or about 4,000 of KCUSD’s approximate 9,700 students. California standardized test results, released to the public on Oct. 9, showed similar growth in KCUSD’s English Language Arts (ELA) performance.
In 2014-15, when the state’s current testing model was first used, 37% of students met or exceeded state standards in ELA. Most recently, that number jumped to 55.9% — higher than the averages reported for both Fresno County and the state as a whole.
“I think everyone in our district would say the fact that we’ve been able to keep going and continue to show steady growth, that’s what we’re most proud of,” said Jose Guzman, assistant superintendent of business and educational operations.
Further, KCUSD reached a significant milestone with these latest scores: the percentage of students in both math and ELA who met or exceeded state standards surpassed the district’s pre-pandemic levels.
In 2018-19, the final testing year before the pandemic, KCUSD had a record-high 40.4% of students meet or exceed state standards in math, and 52.4% do so in ELA. In 2024-25, those numbers hit 42.1% and 55.9%, respectively.
“We saw a similar trajectory as pre-pandemic growth, and so for us to see that we were now completely over pre-pandemic levels was not a surprise for us at all — it was an expectation for us to see it,” Guzman said. “But needless to say, we were extremely happy and proud of our team for getting us to that point.”
This is something districts everywhere have been working toward ever since COVID-19 disrupted education and classroom progress; neither Fresno County nor the state as a whole have accomplished this yet.
A growth mindset
While it is an exciting benchmark, district officials look at it as just one piece in a larger trend of ever-continuing progress.
“A lot of districts … (go) up and down, up and down, and that’s normal too; it’s that we’ve been able to show that sustainable growth,” Guzman said. “We’ve had little dips here and there, but if you look at the long term data there, you can see that pre-pandemic we were showing that same growth, and we were at or above the county and state rates of growth, and we’ve been able to sustain that.”
Around the district, administrators, principals, teachers and parents say the number one thing that keeps this growth going is a positive climate and culture developed over at least the last 20 years.
The thing that makes KCUSD stand out isn’t just one strategy, often referred to as a “silver bullet,” Guzman said. It’s not that the teachers are more dedicated than others or that the schools use never-before-seen instructional techniques. It’s that every person at KCUSD, no matter their role, is working together to get students what they need.
“In this community, we literally raise the kids together,” Guzman said. “We have tremendous parental support … (and) engagement. We have great relationships with our associations, our teachers’ union and our classified union. We work together because everyone understands that at the end of the day, we’re here for the students.”
Guzman said he also believes it’s less about the “what” KCUSD does for its students and more about the “how” and the “why.” Whether someone is a classroom teacher, bus driver or elected board member, their goal is to meet the district’s mission of helping every student attain their highest potential.
“It’s not just a thing we put on the wall — well, we do, but it’s not just words,” Guzman said. “It’s actions and beliefs and it comes down to that.”
This is reflected in the way Superintendent John Campell constantly talks about how district staff are there to do whatever it takes for students to achieve at high levels, Guzman said. It’s the way the student services department looks at how it can support students who are struggling and the fiscal department ensures everyone has the resources they need to carry out their work.
“It’s all of those things being in alignment that is the silver bullet,” Guzman said. “So there is no ‘silver bullet,’ but that climate and culture, that we are all doing it for that reason, that’s what it’s been for us.”
All of this together is what sets KCUSD apart, Guzman said, and it wasn’t something that happened overnight. It was built up over 20 years under the steady leadership of Campbell and the superintendent before him, Juan Garza, as well as the KCUSD Board of Trustees.
Culture in practice
At the individual school site, this culture is visible in many different ways throughout the day or week.
For Washington Elementary School Principal Greg Visser, it’s reflected in how welcoming the front office staff is and how you can always see both teachers and administrative staff pitching in where needed, opening car doors during school drop-off or helping out in the cafeteria.
Through professional learning communities and collaborative teams, the sense of cooperation and togetherness then translates into gains in the classroom. Driven by the fact that they’re all there to help students achieve, teachers from the same grade level collaborate at least once a week to review instructional strategies, ensure their lesson plans are aligned and compare how well their students have grasped the topics at hand.
“The biggest thing is that they’re able to collaborate with some transparency and they’re comfortable with each other because they trust each other, and that kind of speaks to the culture, that it’s a tight-knit family here,” Visser said. “And we all are working for each other, working to support each other.”
Monica Ramirez, whose 9-year-old son is a fourth grader at Washington, has seen the benefits of this open communication and collaboration. Ramirez said that when her son started at Washington, he was struggling to read full sentences and used to cry most mornings before school. Now, with advocacy from Ramirez and help from Washington support staff, his attitude toward school has improved, and his results from testing in third grade showed that he’s nearly meeting state standards.
Ramirez said she advocated for her son to be assessed for an Individualized Education Program (IEP) when he started at Washington, something that teachers and staff were very accepting of and acted on fairly quickly. Thanks to his IEP, he gets pulled out of class to receive extra help in reading, math and any other areas he’s falling behind in.
“He seems to be distracted when it comes to big groups in a normal school setting, so I think the one-on-one and the pulling out does help him,” Ramirez said. “He gets pulled out with other kids as well but it’s not as big as the larger class setting. So from (when he started) to now he’s able to read fuller sentences than he was before.”
The percentage of students meeting or exceeding state standards in math and ELA at Washington surpassed pre-pandemic levels in the 2022-23 school year.
Over the last five years, since testing started again in the 2020-21 school year, Washington Elementary students in third, fourth and fifth grades have increased their ELA proficiency by 27.7%, growing from 22.98% in 2020-21 to 50.7% in 2024-25. In math, they’ve increased proficiency by 42.6%, growing from 17.3% of students meeting or exceeding standards immediately after the pandemic to 59.9% doing so last year.
Visser said Washington Elementary has had some of the best student attendance in the state over the last few years, which he believes speaks to how students are comfortable being at school.
“They want to be here, they love being here, … and that part to me, if the kids are comfortable, they’re gonna learn, and I think that also plays a big factor in how they’ve grown over the past couple of years,” Visser said.
Standout statistics
When it comes to the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP), which tests students in grades third through eighth and again in 11th grade on math and ELA, KCUSD is on top — or close to it — in nearly every way.
On average across all grades last year, 42% of KCUSD students met or exceeded standards in math, which was 8% better than the Fresno County average and 4.8% better than the state average. In ELA, 55.9% of students met or exceeded standards, which was 9.4% better than the county average and 7% better than the state.
Out of all the districts in Fresno County, KCUSD is second only to Clovis Unified School District — which in 2024-25 had 54.1% of students meet or exceed standards in math and 67.8% of students meet or exceed standards in ELA.
As KCUSD celebrates its growth so far and works to keep it up, Guzman said they are chasing that number one spot.
“Maybe it’s aspirational, but we hope to gain on that and close that gap that does exist between number one and number two,” Guzman said. “We’ve been doing it year after year, so there is nothing that tells me we can’t do it.”
Where Kings Canyon consistently ranks first or in the top three is in the amount of growth it has seen year-to-year and over the last decade since the state introduced the CAASPP exams in the 2014-15 school year.
Across the last 10 years, overall student proficiency has improved by 21% in math for KCUSD, compared with 11% for both the county and state. In ELA, KCUSD has improved by 19%, compared with 9% for the county and 12% for the state.
In the last three years, KCUSD saw the second-most growth in ELA proficiency among school districts in Fresno, Tulare and Madera counties; Caruthers Unified School District recorded the most growth. In math, the district’s three-year growth ranks third, behind Woodlake Unified School District and Sanger Unified School District. KCUSD’s overall proficiency in that area is still higher, however.
Another key area administrators look to is how KCUSD falls among districts throughout the state with similar demographics. This is important because a district’s total enrollment, as well as the challenges individual students face, impacts the district’s average test scores.
For example, KCUSD has an enrollment of approximately 9,700 students, while Clovis Unified has nearly 43,700. Additionally, KCUSD’s unduplicated pupil count made up nearly 88% of its total enrollment in 2024-25, while Clovis Unified’s made up about 48%.
The unduplicated pupil count shows how many students belong to at least one of three groups: homeless or foster youth, students who qualify for free/reduced-price meals and English learners.
To get a better sense of where KCUSD stands compared to similar districts, administrators track 30 other districts that have an enrollment between 5,000 and 15,000 students and an unduplicated pupil count between 75% and 100%.
For both math and ELA, KCUSD ranks number one out of 31 similar districts when it comes to the overall percentage of students who met or exceeded standards in the 2024-25 school year and when it comes to the most growth over a three-year period.
Still, Guzman said it’s never going to be enough until 100% of KCUSD students are meeting and exceeding state standards.
“Until every child with a disability can still achieve at high levels, until every student that has obstacles at home is meeting and exceeding standards,” Guzman said. “Until that happens, we’re not done, and that’s what we’re shooting for. We do everything we can to get there.”
