Last week, the California Department of Education published the 2025 California School Dashboard and corresponding data files on DataQuest, showing that students continue to see improved outcomes across all key indicators of student success.
The 2025 Dashboard shows that California’s graduation rate has continued to make steady, modest progress and is now at its highest since the launch of the California School Dashboard in 2017—87.5 percent, up 4.5 percentage points since 2017.
Also good news: Graduation rates show accelerated progress for many specific student groups and the gap is narrowing among minority and disadvantaged students, as well as for students with disabilities. College and career readiness has increased by 3.1 percentage points statewide—53.9 percent of graduates met California’s A-G course requirements, which is the uniform minimum set of courses required for admission to California public universities. And the rate of chronic absenteeism for TK–8 students continues to improve and is now at 17.1 percent, an improvement of more than 10 percentage points from an all-time high of 30 percent in 2022.
The Healdsburg Unified School District (HUSD) serves a population of 1,236 students, which reflects an increase in enrollment from last year. Socioeconomically disadvantaged students comprise 66.4 percent of the district’s students, and 15.1 percent are English learners. HUSD generated an increase of 7.2 percentage points in their graduation rate over one year, for a 2025 graduation rate of 96.7 percent.
The district has also generated impressive gains in academic outcomes for two years in a row, in addition to significantly improving the graduation rate and college and career readiness this year. According to this year’s Dashboard results, Healdsburg has increased ELA scores by 13.9 points, increased math scores by 4.2 points, and increased college and career readiness by 17 percentage points.
Superintendent Chris Vanden Heuvel credits this progress to the hard work of students, staff and educators, and attributed this success to a number of district initiatives, in particular, the work to implement professional learning communities that prescriptively focus on instruction. This multiyear, ongoing effort has been made possible through funding from the California Educator Effectiveness and Student Support and Professional Development grants.
Furthermore, Vanden Heuvel credited the District’s focus on social-emotional wellness as a key strategy that has removed obstacles to learning. Through the use of the Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant, as well as the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative grants, the district has been able to employ mental health specialists who provide counseling services to students at all school sites. Vanden Heuvel stated that the counseling team and this comprehensive approach to student support systems have made a huge difference in helping students be more ready to learn every day.
