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Ballard High School

Seattle Public Schools · High · grades 9-12 · 1418 NW 65th St, Seattle, WA 98117-5237

Location

1418 NW 65th St, Seattle, WA 98117-5237

Academic snapshot

Meeting standard, latest year
77.5%
SBAC ELA+Math combined, 2024-25
Meeting standard, 3-year
75.5%
#11 of 173 high schools region-wide · #2 of 15 in this district
Exceeding standard, latest year
53.4%
SBAC Level 4, the top score band
Exceeding standard, 3-year
50.2%
#13 of 173 high schools region-wide · #2 of 15 in this district
3-year trend

Student outcomes

Graduating in 4 years
91.3%
Of the entering 9th-grade class
Enrolled in college
75.0%
Any 2/4-year, first year after HS
9th graders on track
96.6%
Earned all attempted credits
College-level coursework
72.5%
AP / IB / Running Start / CTE
Regular attendance
75.3%
Missing fewer than 2 days/month

Directly from OSPI Report Card (graduation, postsecondary via ERDC, ninth-grade on track, dual credit, growth, attendance). Latest published year.

Who attends

Students from low-income homes
13.1%
English language learners
3.3%
Highly Capable program
14.1%
Enrollment
1,706
Kids per typical block
Density band: unknown

Teachers

Teachers (latest)
82
Avg years experience
12.3
MA-degree share
85.4%
3-year experience trend

Avg years and MA-degree share are direct OSPI publications; the 3-year trend is our derivation. From data.wa.gov/yp28-ks6d.

Nearby schools

We haven't mapped this district's official feeder chart yet, so these are the closest schools of the next level by straight-line distance, not your assigned or guaranteed schools. Your address decides the assignment. See the districts with full pathways mapped.

Nearest middle schools by distance

Competition and advanced-peer evidence

Aggregated from WHSCA, Washington Science Olympiad, The Blue Alliance, and the Seattle Times National Merit list. "Known counts" only, missing public evidence is not proof of absence.

Highly Capable / gifted pathway

Curated from district Highly Capable program pages, with observed-at dates and confidence labels.

Research dossier

Ballard High School

Seattle Public Schools · grades 9–12 · 1,706 students · comprehensive attendance-area high school in northwest Seattle

The verdict

Ballard's reputation around Seattle is "the well-rounded one," and the evidence largely agrees, though with sharper edges than that phrase suggests. Its distinctive assets are breadth and the humanities: a distribution of English language arts (ELA) scores at the 82.8th percentile of its demographic peer group, and a student newspaper publishing since 1917 that collects national Pacemaker finalist nods. Add a vocal jazz ensemble that won the 2026 state title, and the only program in the city where a senior can graduate prepared to sit for a Coast Guard boat-operator license.

What Ballard is not, on the public record, is a competition-STEM school. Math lands at the 64th percentile against demographic peers, and recent state results show no footprint in Science Olympiad, chess, or olympiad-track math despite a deep Advanced Placement (AP) catalog. Advanced learning here is strictly self-service: the 14.1% of students with a Highly Capable designation choose their own rigor, with no cohort structure. A motivated generalist will find more open doors than they can use; a family optimizing for a math-olympiad peer group should tour with pointed questions.

Researched 2026-06-27. Citations and claim ledger included in the full dossier.

That is the free excerpt. The full dossier is the rest of the file: how these outcomes hold up in context, how deep the advanced-peer group actually runs, how families get in (and who doesn't), culture signals from handbooks and climate surveys, logistics, neighborhood context, the open questions to ask on your tour, and every citation, so you can check our work. Unlock it for $9, or get a $29 Research Pass with 3 dossiers included.

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