Best Public Elementary Schools in Seattle
The Seattle public-elementary picture is more complicated than the simple top-ten suggests. Seattle Public Schools is the state's largest district, but its highest-scoring elementary schools sit in a relatively narrow band of north-end and northeast neighborhoods — Bryant, Wedgwood, Wallingford, Greenwood, Phinney Ridge — while the dataset's overall #1 elementary in the Seattle region is in fact in the Bellevue School District. Medina Elementary in Medina, ranked #4 in Washington by U.S. News with 94 percent math and 95 percent ELA proficiency, leads the regional list because the lens defining this list captures schools in the broader Seattle metro footprint, and there is no Seattle SD elementary that matches Medina's outcomes on the Smarter Balanced assessment.
Frantz Coe Elementary in Seattle's North Queen Anne neighborhood is the top in-city Seattle SD school and one of the highest-scoring SPS elementaries in any year, with 89 percent math and 90 percent ELA. Bryant in northeast Seattle is the second SPS school in the top ten, with a notable gap between strong ELA (92 percent) and somewhat lower math (80 percent). John Stanford International School and McDonald International School in the Wallingford and Green Lake areas are the pair of SPS dual-language-immersion schools — Stanford runs Spanish and Japanese tracks, with the first Spanish immersion class graduating in 2005 and the first Japanese class in 2007. Both are choice schools that draw across the SPS attendance area, and both feed into Hamilton International Middle School and ultimately Lincoln High School. Greenwood Elementary and West Woodland round out the SPS presence.
Mercer Island School District is heavily represented despite serving fewer than 5,000 students total: Lakeridge and Island Park both make the top ten, reflecting the unusual concentration of high-scoring elementaries on a single island that operates as its own district. Lakeview Elementary in Kirkland (Lake Washington SD) is the lone non-Seattle, non-MISD, non-Bellevue entry in the list.
A structural pattern: the top SPS elementaries cluster strongly north of the Ship Canal. There is no SPS elementary south of downtown in this top ten. The geographic distribution reflects long-running disparities in school-foundation parent giving, neighborhood demographics, and the historical impact of Seattle's school-assignment policy changes since the early 2000s.
Cascadia Elementary, the Highly Capable Cohort program building, sits at the top of SPS's elementary distribution by a wide margin. The remaining top schools cluster in the historically wealthier north-end and Madison Park neighborhoods (McGilvra, Bryant, Loyal Heights, Lawton), with the south-end attendance areas (Hawthorne, Dunlap, MLK) absent from the top of the SBA-proficiency lens.
Ranked schools
- 001MEDINA ELEMENTARY SCHOOLBELLEVUE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING93%
- 002FRANTZ COE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING89%
- 003LAKERIDGE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLMERCER ISLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING88%
- 004BRYANT ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING86%
- 005ISLAND PARK ELEMENTARYMERCER ISLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING86%
- 006JOHN STANFORD INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING85%
- 007MCDONALD INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING85%
- 008LAKEVIEW ELEMENTARYLAKE WASHINGTON SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING84%
- 009GREENWOOD ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING83%
- 010WEST WOODLAND ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING83%
- 011WEST MERCER ELEMENTARYMERCER ISLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING83%
- 012WEDGWOOD ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING82%
- 013QUEEN ANNE ELEMENTARYSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING81%
- 014VIEW RIDGE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING81%
- 015MERIDIAN PARK ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSHORELINE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING80%
- 016MCGILVRA ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING77%
- 017THURGOOD MARSHALL ELEMENTARYSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING77%
- 018MOORLANDS ELEMENTARYNORTHSHORE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING76%
- 019MONTLAKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING76%
- 020LOCKWOOD ELEMENTARYNORTHSHORE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING75%
- 021LAWTON ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING75%
- 022B F DAY ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING74%
- 023DISCOVERY COMMUNITY SCHOOLLAKE WASHINGTON SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING74%
- 024NORTHWOOD ELEMENTARY SCHOOLMERCER ISLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING74%
- 025HIGHLAND TERRACE ELEMENTARYSHORELINE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING74%
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