Heritage Peak Charter School: Full Guide

Location: Rio Linda, CA

Are you a student or parent at Heritage Peak Charter School? Want to understand how to get the most out of high school?

We've written the best guide to Heritage Peak Charter available. Here we'll cover:

Breakdowns of student ethnicity, gender, and family income
How safe Heritage Peak Charter is to attend
SAT/ACT/AP scores earned by Heritage Peak Charter students
Which AP/IB classes you can take at Heritage Peak Charter
Every sports team you can join at Heritage Peak Charter

Let's get started!

Basic Information

Heritage Peak Charter School is a public school, supporting grades 0 to 12 . It's located in Rio Linda, CA in Sacramento County.

Based on its location, Heritage Peak Charter is classified as a school in a large suburb. Here's the location on a map:

Contact Information

Mailing address:

Heritage Peak Charter School
6450 20th St.
Rio Linda, CA 95673-5077

Phone number: 8669929033

Heritage Peak Charter School homepage: http://www.pacificcharters.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=165766&type=d

Principal: Paul Keefer
Email the principal: [email protected]

Student Demographics

Student Enrollment

The total enrollment at Heritage Peak Charter School is 1103 students, making it a somewhat large high school, in the top half of all California high schools by size.

As a mid-sized high school, Heritage Peak Charter strikes the balance between size and comfort. There will be enough students to provide a diversity of experiences, like clubs and sports, for you to join. But it'll be small enough that you'll likely get to know most people in your class.

Growth in Student Body Size

Is Heritage Peak Charter School growing or shrinking? This will help you see trends in where the school is headed.

From our calculations, the enrollment at Heritage Peak Charter has decreased over the past few years. We calculate this by comparing enrollment in grades 9 to 12.

	Male Students	Female Students	All Students
9^th grade	53	63	116
10^th grade	46	67	113
11^th grade	59	82	141
12^th grade	104	119	223

As you can see in the table above, the senior class is 107 students larger than the freshman class. This suggests that Heritage Peak Charter is shrinking in size and taking on fewer students.

There are a few reasons this can happen. The population of Rio Linda could be decreasing, thus sending fewer students into Heritage Peak Charter. Alternatively, other schools (like charter or private schools) might be appearing, drawing students away.

Gender Split

Are there more boys or girls at Heritage Peak Charter School?

From our statistics, Heritage Peak Charter has a 45:55 split between male and female students in the high school grades.

Heritage Peak Charter has a balanced male-female ratio that's largely representative of the general population in Sacramento County. Since the student body is roughly half and half, it should feel like there are equal numbers of boys and girls in your classes.

This usually means that Heritage Peak Charter doesn't strongly select for either males or females, unlike other schools that have a large majority of males or females.

Ethnicity Breakdown

What's the racial diversity at Heritage Peak Charter School? Does one ethnicity make up most of the student body, or is it fairly balanced?

From our statistics, Heritage Peak Charter has a somewhat homogenous student body, with the majority of students identifying as one ethnicity, but not representing over 70% of the student body. Most schools in California fit this profile, so Heritage Peak Charter isn't out of the ordinary. Most students attending class with you will be of the predominant ethnicity, but there will be meaningful diversity from other races.

The majority of students at Heritage Peak Charter are white. In California, white students make up 26.3% of all California students, and are the second most common ethnicity after Hispanic students. Thus Heritage Peak Charter is one of hundreds of schools in the state that have a majority of white students.

	Percentage	Number
American Indian/Alaska Native	1.5%	17
Asian	3.6%	40
Hispanic	25.7%	284
Black	9.3%	103
White	52.3%	577
Hawaiian Native/Pacific Islander	0.5%	6
Two or more races	6.8%	76

High schools usually reflect the population in the surrounding area, so the ethnicities of students likely resembles those of Rio Linda. If you'd like to see how other nearby schools look in diversity, just google "[name of school] prepscholar" to find our guide to that specific school.

Income Level of Heritage Peak Charter Families

What are the family incomes of students at Heritage Peak Charter School? To determine this, we look at the number of students who qualify for free or reduced lunches, a classification by the US federal government.

To qualify for a reduced price meal, family income needs to be below 185% of the federal poverty guidelines. For a family of 4, this means an income of around $45,000 or below.

To qualify for a free meal, family income needs to be below 130% of the federal poverty guidelines. For a family of 4, this means an income of around $32,000 or below.

The lower the percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced price meals, the higher the income levels are likely to be.

At Heritage Peak Charter, 35.4% of students qualify for reduced-price lunches, and 24.1% qualify for free lunches.

This means Heritage Peak Charter has a below average level of poverty. With most students not qualifying for free or reduced price lunches, Heritage Peak Charter is below average among California schools in poverty level. The income level of families in Rio Linda is thus likely to be relatively high.

	Number	Percent
Reduced-price lunches	391	35.4%
Free lunches	266	24.1%
Do not qualify for reduced-price or free lunches	446	40.4%

As with ethnicity, this likely reflects the surrounding community in Rio Linda and doesn't speak much about the school itself.

Heritage Peak Charter is in the middle 50% of schools by income level. Generally, higher income level schools are better-funded and have a higher quality range of classes and activities. Heritage Peak Charter is likely in the middle of the pack in this regard and will give you a good set of options to try.

If you have any interests that Heritage Peak Charter doesn't cover, look to your local community for activities, or to the Internet for self-study AP classes.

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School Safety

How safe is Heritage Peak Charter School to attend? Can you expect a lot of conflict as a student here?

To study this, we look at disciplinary data for two types of incidents at Heritage Peak Charter: referrals to law enforcement (when incidents are reported to police), and arrests.

These are the most serious disciplinary actions available to school administration and are more severe than suspensions or expulsions. Suspensions are often discretionary and can be given just for being disruptive in class. In contrast, law enforcement referrals and arrests often indicate incidents that put the safety of other Heritage Peak Charter students at risk.

In the school year of 2011-2012, there were 0 referrals to law enforcement, and 0 school-related arrests. This is out of a total enrollment of 856 students.

To put this into perspective, most California schools (59% of them) reported 0 law enforcement referrals and arrests.

Compare this school with other high schools in the same school district, using the following table:

Twin Rivers Unified School District Safety

School Name	Total Referred	Total Arrests	Enrollment
Foothill High	62	6	353
Grant Union High	0	0	2026
Highlands High	61	0	880
Rio Linda High	0	0	1843
Elwood J. Keema High	2	0	730
Pacific Career And Technology High	0	0	131

Academic Performance

Now we get to a major aspect of assessing a high school: academic performance. How good of an education will you get at Heritage Peak Charter School? Will you be competitive for college? Will you have access to advanced classes?

We've compiled everything we could find about Heritage Peak Charter's academics here.

Graduation Rate

To start off, an important benchmark of academic achievement is graduation rate. For all students who start high school at Heritage Peak Charter, the state of California wants as many students to graduate as possible, since a high school diploma can mean a big difference in getting a job.

At Heritage Peak Charter, 38% (of 203) Heritage Peak Charter students graduated within four years of starting high school.

Here's how this stacks up to other schools. The California state government has defined 90% as a target rate. The state average is around 80-85%.

Heritage Peak Charter is in the 27th percentile of all public high schools in California for graduation rate. This is below average. Generally, a graduation rate of above 90% is considered good and well above average, and below 75% is well below average.

Note: This data comes from a few years back, but the trends are likely to stay the same, since schools don't get significantly better or worse within a short period of time.

Standardized Testing

Next, we'll look at another major piece of high school academics: standardized testing performance for Heritage Peak Charter School students. These are tests that are administered to large populations of students for comparison purposes.

Let’s start by taking a look at the data for nationally administered standardized tests.

SAT Scores

As you probably know, the SAT is a critical test used for college admissions. The higher the score you get, the better your academic performance compared to students nationwide, and the easier it is to get into top colleges.

We did in-depth research and found the average Heritage Peak Charter School SAT scores.

The average composite SAT score is a 1440 out of 2400, compared to a national average of 1500. Each year, roughly 21 at Heritage Peak Charter take the SAT.

This is a below-average SAT score, putting Heritage Peak Charter School in the bottom 50% of all California schools. Only 33% of students here score the national average or higher. Because the SAT measures academic achievement, this suggests that Heritage Peak Charter may offer a somewhat lacking high school education, compared to schools with higher SAT averages.

Note, however, that an average is just an average - top performers will still be able to impress. If you work hard and get an SAT score well above Heritage Peak Charter's average, you'll have a great shot at entering a good college.

Keep in mind, however, that only 3% of all students at Heritage Peak Charter took the SAT, so the results could be skewed by the small sample size.

Here's a breakdown of SAT scores by section:

Average SAT Scores (2013-2014)

Source	Critical Reading	Math	Writing	Composite
Heritage Peak Charter	480	499	466	1440
California	498	510	496	1504
United States	495	511	484	1490

Note that the SAT has since changed to a 1600 scale, but the trends above for your high school are likely to continue. Just use this guide to convert between the old 2400 scale and the new 1600 scale.

To learn more about SAT percentile rankings, read our guide on what SAT percentiles really mean.

How good is 1440 as an SAT score? Find out with our complete 1440 SAT score guide, including which colleges you can get into with a 1440 or any other SAT score!

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Advanced Placement (AP)

Advanced Placement (AP) classes are college-level courses that are an additional academic challenge may give Heritage Peak Charter School students credit for college.

Here's what we're looking for: high average AP test scores as well as high AP passing rates.

AP Scores

Every year, roughly 1 students in grades 9-12 at Heritage Peak Charter take 0 AP exams. It's important to understand how students score on the AP - earning a 3, 4, or 5 on the AP test means passing the test and often earning college credit.

The average score of all AP exams taken at Heritage Peak Charter is out of 5.

Compared to schools across California, this score puts Heritage Peak Charter at below average performance. On AP tests, the passing score is considered a 3, and unfortunately the number of students who don't pass is greater than the number of do. This performance places Heritage Peak Charter School in the bottom 25 % of schools for AP tests.

This isn't all bad news for you, though. It's still good that Heritage Peak Charter offers AP classes so you have the opportunity to take courses at a college level. Your school might be new to offering AP courses, and typically teachers get better at preparing students for AP tests over time. Finally, as you'll see below, there are still students who earn a passing grade of 3 or above - and with hard work, you can be one of them.

We have specific data on how many students got a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 (out of 5) on AP exams in the chart below:

To find out the passing rates for specific AP courses at Heritage Peak Charter School, you'll have to talk to your guidance counselor (who can then help you find that information). For instance, one AP Calculus teacher may have an above-90% passing rate, while another might only have a 50% passing rate. If you can, you'll want to take the class with the teacher who has more students get a 3 or above on the AP exam.

Find out more about the average score for each AP subject here.

State Tests

As of 2014, eleventh graders attending Heritage Peak Charter School must take standardized tests in English/Language Arts and Math as part of the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP). These align with the new Common Core standards and are called the "Smarter Balanced" tests.

If Heritage Peak Charter students meet or exceed state standards, they're academically prepared to graduate high school and go to college. Specifically, we care about the percentage of students who meet or exceed state standards. The larger this number, the higher the preparation of students at Heritage Peak Charter.

English/Language Arts

At Heritage Peak Charter School, 37% of students meet or exceed state standards in English/Language Arts.

This is considered below average and puts Heritage Peak Charter in the bottom 50% of all high schools in California for English/Language Arts. The majority of Heritage Peak Charter students do not pass state standards, and only a small percentage pass.

This specific percentage isn't much cause for concern - because the Common Core is new, the pass rate at Heritage Peak Charter will likely rise over time. But it still reflects Heritage Peak Charter's below average standing among California high schools.

English/Language Arts Test Results (2015)

Read more about what’s measured in each ELA area score here.

Math

The other major test taken for state assessments is Math. Across the state, Math performance is generally lower than English/Language Arts performance, so it's natural for this number to be lower.

At Heritage Peak Charter School, 17% of students meet or exceed state standards in Math. This is considered well below average and puts Heritage Peak Charter in the bottom 25% of all high schools in California. The vast majority of Heritage Peak Charter students don't meet state standards, and only a small percentage pass.

Math Test Results (2015)

Read more about what’s measured in each Math area score, go here.

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What’s Next?

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