Best Public Elementary Schools in Snohomish County
Snohomish County's top public elementaries cluster overwhelmingly in the south-county Bothell / Mill Creek / Mountlake Terrace corridor, in the Northshore, Edmonds, and Everett school districts. The pattern echoes the wider King-Snohomish suburban geography: high-scoring elementaries concentrate where dual-income professional households concentrate, along the I-405 / SR-527 corridor that connects to the Eastside tech employers. North county (Marysville, Stanwood, Arlington) and the Sky Valley (Monroe, Sultan) do not appear in the top ten despite enrolling thousands of students.
Challenge Elementary in Mountlake Terrace, Edmonds School District, leads the list by a wide margin — and the explanation is straightforward. Challenge is the district's Highly Capable elementary program, where students identified through cognitive testing as significantly advanced are clustered together for grades 1-6. Challenge is co-located with Terrace Park School, sharing a building with about 295 neighborhood students. With 96-97 percent proficiency in both ELA and math, Challenge has been the #1 elementary in Washington in some recent years on Smarter Balanced averages and has been a National Blue Ribbon school. Because Challenge serves only Edmonds-district-resident students who pass into the program through the CogAT, the comparison with neighborhood elementaries is not apples-to-apples.
Beyond Challenge, the top ten is a rotation of strong neighborhood elementaries from three districts. Tambark Creek (Everett SD), which opened in 2019 as an 83,000-square-foot two-story campus in the Mill Creek / Bothell area, is the newest school on the list. Cedar Wood, Forest View, Mill Creek, and Silver Firs anchor Everett SD's top end. Fernwood, Canyon Creek, Kokanee, and Shelton View represent Northshore School District's strong south-Snohomish footprint — Northshore's Bothell-area boundary places it on both sides of the King-Snohomish line, and the elementaries here largely serve north Bothell-Snohomish addresses.
Edmonds SD has only one school in the top ten (Challenge), reflecting the district-wide impact of the highly-capable cluster model rather than a deeper bench. Northshore and Everett each have four neighborhood elementaries in the top ten, suggesting more broadly distributed strength.
Edmonds SD has only one school in the top ten (Challenge), reflecting the district-wide impact of its highly-capable cluster model rather than a deeper bench. Northshore SD dominates the top of the list with its Bothell / Mill Creek elementaries, a function of the district's geographic overlap with the southern Snohomish County tech-commuter corridor.
† 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
- 001CHALLENGE ELEMENTARYEDMONDS SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH96%†
- 002TAMBARK CREEK ELEMENTARY SCHOOLEVERETT SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH87%
- 003FERNWOOD ELEMENTARYNORTHSHORE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING86%
- 004CEDAR WOOD ELEMENTARYEVERETT SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH86%
- 005SILVER FIRS ELEMENTARYEVERETT SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH83%
- 006CANYON CREEK ELEMENTARYNORTHSHORE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING80%
- 007FOREST VIEW ELEMENTARY SCHOOLEVERETT SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH79%
- 008KOKANEE ELEMENTARYNORTHSHORE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING78%
- 009TOTEM FALLSSNOHOMISH SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH78%
- 010MILL CREEK ELEMENTARYEVERETT SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH78%
- 011MUKILTEO ELEMENTARYMUKILTEO SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH74%
- 012STEVENS CREEK ELEMENTARYLAKE STEVENS SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH73%
- 013SHELTON VIEW ELEMENTARYNORTHSHORE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING73%
- 014WHITTIER ELEMENTARYEVERETT SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH73%
- 015LITTLE CEDARS ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSNOHOMISH SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH70%
- 016MONROE ELEMENTARYEVERETT SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH69%
- 017RUBY BRIDGES ELEMENTARYNORTHSHORE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING68%
- 018EDMONDS ELEMENTARYEDMONDS SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH68%
- 019SEATTLE HILL ELEMENTARYSNOHOMISH SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH67%
- 020PENNY CREEK ELEMENTARYEVERETT SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH67%
- 021SEAVIEW ELEMENTARYEDMONDS SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH67%
- 022BRIER ELEMENTARYEDMONDS SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH66%
- 023FRANK LOVE ELEMENTARYNORTHSHORE SCHOOL DISTRICT · KING66%
- 024SALEM WOODS ELEMENTARY SCHOOLMONROE SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH66%
- 025HILLTOP ELEMENTARYEDMONDS SCHOOL DISTRICT · SNOHOMISH66%
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