The Trump administration scrubbed info on California's 'Blue Ribbon' schools. We recreated it

In 2025, 31 California schools were nominated for one of the nation’s highest education honors, but the Trump administration abruptly canceled the program weeks before the final award announcement would have been made.

The National Blue Ribbon Schools program honored public and private schools where students score high on state standardized tests and those that had made the most progress in closing achievement gaps between different groups of students. Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell created the award in 1982 during President Ronald Reagan’s first term.

The program’s cancellation was first reported in late August.

More than 9,000 schools have received the award since it began, but now the official national record of that achievement is gone along with the program’s website.

LAist created this searchable table to document all of California's winners using information from the state education department’s website as well as data from the Internet Archive and PDF remnants still accessible online.

Among highlights from the last quarter century:

• Los Angeles County schools have won the award 177 times. 
• Orange County schools won the award 99 times. 
• Schools are only eligible to win every five years. These Southern California schools have won most often (3 times) since 2000: Long Beach’s California Academy of Mathematics and Science, Santa Clarita’s Stevenson Ranch Elementary, Cypress’s Oxford Academy and San Bernardino’s Richardson PREP HI Middle.

LAist asked the department about the decision, but has not received a response. A spokesperson told the education news site Chalkbeat in September that the change was “in the spirit of Returning Education to the States” and that local leaders were best positioned to recognize school excellence. The cancellation is one of many changes to U.S. education policy since President Donald Trump started his second term.

California will recognize the state’s 2025 National Blue Ribbon Schools at a ceremony in the spring, but there is not a plan to continue the award in the future.

“Superintendent Thurmond wanted to ensure that the hard work of students, staff, and educators who had been certified as [National Blue Ribbon Schools] nominees did not go unrecognized,” California Department of Education spokesperson Scott Roark said in a statement to LAist.

More than a dozen other states have since created their own version of the program. But educators say the award’s prestige and impact was linked to national recognition.

“It almost makes any school, including my school, feel that…now we're in the finals,” said Hing Chow, principal at Monterey Vista Elementary, which won the Blue Ribbon award in 2004 and 2020.

The Monterey Park elementary is a Title I school that receives additional money to support students who live in poverty.

“When we got this award, our community and staff, they were extremely proud because it really affirmed… that there were results,” Chow said. “It also gave us momentum to aspire to better results.”