Here are comparison scores (percentiles) from the 2007 STAR tests taken by almost every public-school student in California. This test is administered annually by the California Department of Education.

We have broken out the results in a way that makes comparisons between schools easy.

The percentiles, based on the scores, range from 1 (the lowest) to 99 (the highest). A school that scores in the 20th percentile is landing in the bottom 20 percent of the state. A school that scores in the 95th percentile is placing among the top 5 percent of schools in the state.

The scores are presented alphabetically by district and within each district alphabetically by school.

The city profiles will give you the school district or districts serving each town. For ease of searching, read the city profile, find out the name of the district and search by district.

Or just scroll through the scores.

These percentiles should be considered approximate measures of how the schools and their students are performing.

A few schools will post scores that bounce all over or will have, say, scores in the 70s with the exception of one class in one test scoring in the 30s.

For the why … maybe the kids had an off day or misunderstood the tests or maybe the testing group is small and a few students scoring very high or very low will skew the scores. Or maybe the score is wrong. After issuing the scores, the department of education reviews its figures, accepts comments from the school districts and later makes corrections.

We suggest that you ignore the aberrational scores and look at what the majority of the scores imply.

These percentiles don’t show whether a school’s scores from year to year are rising or falling. The rankings show just how the schools compare against one another.

Many low- and middle-scoring schools have students who score high. Many high-scoring schools have students who land below the 25th percentile.

A few schools post average scores but turn out many high-scoring students.

Click here to view.