Tamalpais Valley Elementary vs Strawberry Point Elementary

Tamalpais Valley Elementary and Strawberry Point Elementary are both top-tier Mill Valley elementary schools serving grades KG–05, but Tamalpais Valley Elementary holds a clear edge in California's state rankings: #72 of 9,533 schools versus Strawberry Point Elementary's #298 of 9,533. That 226-position gap reflects a meaningful difference in performance despite both schools sitting well inside the state's top 5 percent. Their overall ratings stand at 9.4/10 for Tamalpais Valley Elementary and 9.0/10 for Strawberry Point Elementary — a 0.4-point gap that, at this tier, signals a consistent rather than marginal advantage.

On academics, Tamalpais Valley Elementary scores 9.6/10 versus Strawberry Point Elementary's 9.3/10 — a 0.3-point difference suggesting stronger or more consistent proficiency outcomes. The growth gap is larger: Tamalpais Valley Elementary posts a 9.3/10 growth score against Strawberry Point Elementary's 8.7/10, a 0.6-point delta indicating that students at Tamalpais Valley are advancing at a meaningfully faster rate relative to academic expectations, regardless of where they start.

Tamalpais Valley Elementary enrolls 335 students compared to Strawberry Point Elementary's 241, making it roughly 39 percent larger. Despite the bigger enrollment, Tamalpais Valley maintains a student-teacher ratio of 19.7:1 versus Strawberry Point's 20.1:1 — a negligible difference that gives neither school a practical class-size advantage. Free and reduced-price lunch eligibility is low at both campuses: 5 percent at Tamalpais Valley Elementary and 7 percent at Strawberry Point Elementary, reflecting similarly affluent family populations with no meaningful equity gap between the two schools.

Both schools cover the same grade span — kindergarten through fifth grade — and sit just 2.0 miles apart in Mill Valley, so commute and program structure are not differentiators. The distinction between them lives almost entirely in measured outcomes: Tamalpais Valley Elementary's lead on both academic score and growth score is consistent across every metric reported, while Strawberry Point Elementary offers a smaller, slightly more intimate campus without sacrificing top-decile performance statewide.