Seventeen Temecula Valley Unified School District campuses and the district itself landed on the 2026 California Honor Roll. The statewide recognition highlights schools that outperform peers in student achievement and close gaps for disadvantaged students.
The Educational Results Partnership (ERP), a Sacramento-based nonprofit, announced the list following the Thursday, Oct. 15 release of 2026 Smarter Balanced Assessment results, as first reported by Patch. The Honor Roll uses three years of California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) data in English language arts and math to identify top performers.
Statewide, 2,080 schools and 168 districts made the 2026 list. That represents 24% of all California schools and 22% of districts.
To qualify, a school or district must have scored above the mean at least 80% of the time across all student groups and grade levels over the 2024, 2025 and 2026 testing cycles, according to ERP's published methodology. Schools in the top 20% that still had Black or Hispanic student outcomes below 80% of the trend line were removed unless they showed year-over-year improvement between 2024–25 and 2025–26.
The methodology breaks schools into peer groups and two poverty categories. "Star" schools have 33% or more students designated socioeconomically disadvantaged. "Scholar" schools fall below that threshold.
"We cannot predict every career that will exist tomorrow, but we can recognize the schools doing an exceptional job of preparing students for whatever the future holds," said Alex Barrios, president and CEO of ERP.
This marks the 12th year ERP has produced the Honor Roll.
TVUSD Superintendent Dr. Kimberly Velez, a 25-year veteran of the district, has highlighted CAASPP gains and progress in closing achievement gaps for historically underserved students as priorities, according to her district biography. The district is also piloting a new elementary mathematics curriculum aligned with the updated California Mathematics Framework.
The statewide Smarter Balanced results that underpin the Honor Roll showed continued progress for California students in 2025–26. Proficiency rates rose to 49.3% in English language arts. In math, 38.4% of students scored proficient or advanced, according to the California Department of Education. The state graduation rate hit 87.9%, a decade high.
Parents can search for their child's school on the full Honor Roll list at honorrollschools.com.
