John Muir Elementary

John Muir Elementary serves 264 students in kindergarten through fifth grade in Berkeley, California. A regular public school with a 20.3-to-1 student-teacher ratio, it earns a composite score of 9.3 out of 10 — Exceptional by MySchoolScout's rating system. The rankings underscore just how rare that score is.

John Muir sits second among Berkeley's 16 public schools and outperforms 99% of all California public schools, landing at 55th out of 9,533 statewide. Narrowed to elementary schools, it places 51st out of 5,817 in the state. Those numbers reflect a genuine top-1% performance record across the largest public school system in the country.

Academic achievement comes in at 9.2, and the growth score of 9.7 sharpens the picture further. Growth tracks how much students advance relative to peers who started at the same level — a 9.7 signals that students here consistently outpace comparable schools, year over year. For families evaluating Berkeley's elementary landscape, John Muir combines high absolute scores with a learning acceleration that's difficult to find in any public school, let alone a public elementary.

The student-teacher ratio at John Muir Elementary is 20.3:1, which is higher than the national average. This may mean larger class sizes, so parents should ask about classroom support, teaching assistants, and how the school differentiates instruction for students who need extra help.