Anderson Elementary, Compton CA - Test Scores & Data

Original Research by School Decision on Anderson Elementary

Anderson Elementary serves a small enrollment across kindergarten through eighth grade in Compton, an urban industrial city in southern Los Angeles County. The school sits in a lower-income neighborhood where the vast majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and the student body is predominantly Hispanic with a smaller Black population. The school draws from the kind of residential and commercial corridor typical of Compton's cityscape, where light-rail transit and warehousing anchor the local economy.

Academic performance shows a mixed picture across the grade bands tested. In English language arts, the school's overall proficiency sits somewhat above the midpoint among Los Angeles County districts, with notable strength in seventh grade. Early elementary grades in ELA show moderate proficiency, while fifth and sixth grades dip lower. Mathematics performance is weaker. Third grade shows solid proficiency, and seventh grade rebounds to a moderate level, but fourth, sixth, and eighth grades all fall below, with fifth grade particularly low. In science, tested only in fifth and eighth grades, proficiency is very low across both grades, with the fifth grade result especially concerning. The school has only one year of assessment data, so trend information is unavailable, leaving open the question of whether performance is stable, improving, or declining.

The school's size is small for its grade band, with kindergarten as the largest cohort and sixth through eighth grades notably compact. This smaller scale may shape class dynamics and peer relationships, though the enrollment picture could reflect feeder-pattern choices or demographic shifts in the neighborhood.

A parent considering Anderson might want to look further into what is driving the particularly low science results and whether the school has targeted interventions underway, especially since science is foundational and these grades set up later coursework. The strength in seventh-grade ELA suggests that particular cohort or grade-level team has found traction, which could be worth understanding. The gap between ELA and math performance is also worth asking the school about directly: what support structures exist for math, and what has changed or is changing to close that gap.

Compton Unified itself is in a period of substantial facilities investment and educational redesign. The district approved major bonds for school construction and upgrades, opened a new flagship Compton High School campus in 2025 designed around project-based learning, and launched a new dual-enrollment P-TECH model high school, the Compton Academy of Technology and Innovation, in August 2025. These district-level changes signal ambition around both facilities and career pathways, though their ripple effects on elementary and middle schools like Anderson are not yet clear. Families should ask what support these changes bring to earlier grades and whether Anderson's curriculum or instruction is shifting in response.

The city itself offers light-rail transit access via the Metro A Line and a downtown that has been rebuilt around a civic center in recent years. Median household income remains below what is needed to afford newly built housing without significant cost burden, a reality that shapes the economic pressure many families in the school community face. Affordable housing development is underway in the city, though the supply-affordability gap remains wide.

Anderson Elementary is a neighborhood school in an investment-focused district, serving a high-need community. Its academic results suggest a school still working to establish consistent proficiency across subjects and grades. The school would fit families seeking small-school community and proximity to public transit, and for whom the district's ongoing infrastructure and program changes matter as context for their children's pathway. A parent should ask directly about the school's strategic priorities, what specific reading or math initiatives are in place, how seventh-grade success in ELA is being leveraged across the building, and what science instruction looks like given those concerning results.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 370%

School 70% · District 58% · ▲ 12 pts above district

▲ 27 pts above state median · ▲ 24 pts above county median

Grade 462%

School 62% · District 46% · ▲ 15 pts above district

▲ 24 pts above state median · ▲ 21 pts above county median

Grade 521%

School 21% · District 33% · ▼ 12 pts below district

▼ 10 pts below state median · ▼ 13 pts below county median

Grade 634%

School 34% · District 44% · ▼ 9 pts below district

▲ 4 pts above state median · ▲ 3 pts above county median

Grade 762%

School 62% · District 43% · ▲ 18 pts above district

▲ 31 pts above state median · ▲ 31 pts above county median

Grade 836%

School 36% · District 40% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▲ 9 pts above state median · ▲ 7 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 358%

School 58% · District 50% · ▲ 8 pts above district

▲ 17 pts above state median · ▲ 16 pts above county median

Grade 458%

School 58% · District 47% · ▲ 11 pts above district

▲ 16 pts above state median · ▲ 14 pts above county median

Grade 541%

School 41% · District 45% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▼ 4 pts below state median · ▼ 5 pts below county median

Grade 644%

School 44% · District 50% · ▼ 6 pts below district

even with state median · ▼ 1 pts below county median

Grade 792%

School 92% · District 57% · ▲ 35 pts above district

▲ 47 pts above state median · ▲ 47 pts above county median

Grade 861%

School 61% · District 53% · ▲ 7 pts above district

▲ 16 pts above state median · ▲ 15 pts above county median

Science

Grade 58%

School 8% · District 21% · ▼ 13 pts below district

▼ 20 pts below state median · ▼ 19 pts below county median

Grade 827%

School 27% · District 19% · ▲ 9 pts above district

▲ 2 pts above state median · ▲ 3 pts above county median

This schoolCompton Unified, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.