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 neighborhoods, Ballard, Queen Anne, Wallingford, Green Lake, and Greenwood, while the overall #1 elementary in the Seattle region is in the Bellevue School District. Medina Elementary in Medina, ranked #4 in Washington by U.S. News, with 97 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 no Seattle SD elementary matches Medina's outcomes on the Smarter Balanced assessment.
West Woodland Elementary in Ballard is the top in-city Seattle SD school this year, third on the list at 88 percent math and 89 percent ELA, after climbing from tenth. Frantz Coe Elementary in North Queen Anne, the top SPS school in most years, is fourth at 86 and 87 percent. McDonald International School and John Stanford International School in the Green Lake and Wallingford 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 rounds out the SPS presence in the top ten; Bryant in northeast Seattle, a top-five school last year, sits just outside it at eleventh.
Mercer Island School District is heavily represented despite serving fewer than 5,000 students total: Lakeridge, Island Park, and West Mercer all 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 entry from outside Seattle, Mercer Island, and Bellevue.
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.
† OSPI withheld this school's 2025-26 result in one or both subjects under its top/bottom suppression rule; the school's 2024-25 result is used for that subject.
Ranked schools
- 001MEDINA ELEMENTARY SCHOOLBELLEVUE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING96%
- 002LAKERIDGE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLMERCER ISLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING89%
- 003WEST WOODLAND ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING88%
- 004FRANTZ COE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING87%
- 005ISLAND PARK ELEMENTARYMERCER ISLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING85%
- 006MCDONALD INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING85%
- 007LAKEVIEW ELEMENTARYLAKE WASHINGTON SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING84%
- 008GREENWOOD ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING84%
- 009WEST MERCER ELEMENTARYMERCER ISLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING83%
- 010JOHN STANFORD INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING83%
- 011BRYANT ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING82%
- 012MERIDIAN PARK ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSHORELINE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING82%
- 013QUEEN ANNE ELEMENTARYSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING80%
- 014MCGILVRA ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING78%
- 015WEDGWOOD ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING78%
- 016GENESEE HILL ELEMENTARYSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING78%
- 017VIEW RIDGE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING78%
- 018MONTLAKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING78%
- 019ALKI ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING77%
- 020DISCOVERY COMMUNITY SCHOOLLAKE WASHINGTON SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING77%†
- 021LAFAYETTE ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING75%
- 022FAIRMOUNT PARK ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING75%
- 023HIGHLAND TERRACE ELEMENTARYSHORELINE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING75%
- 024WHITTIER ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 1 · KING75%
- 025CARL SANDBURG ELEMENTARYLAKE WASHINGTON SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING74%
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