The top reported proficiency rate is 43% in Math. The lowest is 13% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Rise Kohyang Elementary
Rise Kohyang Elementary is a charter school serving kindergarten through fifth grade on South La Fayette Park Place in the Westlake area of Los Angeles, near the edge of Koreatown. It operates under Bright Star Schools and is its own single-school district. The neighborhood is one of the most densely populated parts of the city, with ground-floor businesses below apartment buildings, active street life, and strong Metro bus and rail access. Home values in this zip code sit well below the California state benchmark, and rents have edged slightly lower in recent months, though the area remains expensive by national standards.
The school serves a small elementary population, on the compact end for a K-5 school in a city this size. The student body is predominantly Hispanic, with a meaningful Asian share and a smaller Black population. The vast majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the economic character of the surrounding neighborhood.
On California's CAASPP state assessments, the school's results are below the midpoint among districts in Los Angeles County relative to its peers in that county comparison set. In English language arts, proficiency rates across tested grades are low, roughly in the upper-twenties range. Math results are more varied by grade, with third graders performing better than fifth graders, but the overall math picture also falls below the county midpoint. Fifth-grade science scores are quite low. Only one year of data is available, so there is no trend line yet, and a parent may want to ask the school directly what instructional changes are underway and how results have moved in prior years.
Two developments are worth a parent's close attention. First, the school underwent LAUSD charter renewal in the 2025-26 cycle and was publicly classified as middle performing in its renewal letter. Charter renewals determine whether a school continues operating; this one has been approved for the cycle, but the classification is something to track. Second, LAUSD's Charter Schools Division issued a formal Notice to Cure over disproportionate suspension rates for African American students, whose suspension rate in 2023-24 was substantially higher than the district's expectation. The school's board approved a monitoring plan that includes weekly discipline-data review, climate surveys, and demographic suspension reporting reviewed by the board at least twice a year. For families with Black children in particular, this is an active and material issue. The data on special education and English learner populations was not available in what we received, so those dimensions of student support cannot be characterized here.
The broader Los Angeles context shapes what a school in this location means practically. The city is in an active rezoning and housing production phase, with major infrastructure investment tied to the 2026 World Cup and 2028 Olympics accelerating downtown construction nearby. The neighborhood around the school is dense and transit-connected, but not quiet or suburban. Employers across healthcare, aerospace, entertainment, and higher education are dispersed across the region, and many families in this part of the city rely on Metro rather than cars.
Rise Kohyang draws on a mission connected to Korean American community heritage, operated by Bright Star Schools, though program-level details such as curriculum approach or after-school offerings were not in the data available for this profile. A parent considering the school would do well to visit, ask about the discipline monitoring plan's current status, request any internal data on academic growth over prior years, and clarify what support services are available for English learners and students with IEPs, given those figures were absent from what we received.
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