El Morro Elementary, Laguna Beach CA

Original Research by School Decision on El Morro Elementary

El Morro Elementary serves kindergarten through fifth grade in Laguna Beach, a small coastal village in Orange County where the school sits near the downtown core rather than on a separate suburban campus. The school enrolls a small student body drawn from a community that is predominantly white and affluent, with a quarter qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch and a mix of Hispanic, multiracial, and Asian students alongside the majority white population.

On state assessments, the school's performance is mixed by grade and subject. English language arts proficiency runs stronger than math across the tested grades. In third grade, students show solid proficiency in both subjects, with math outperforming language arts slightly. By fourth grade, language arts pulls ahead. In fifth grade, both subjects decline, with math proficiency falling to just over half and language arts dropping to the low seventies. Science proficiency at fifth grade also sits just above half. Overall across tested subjects and grades, El Morro's average proficiency places it in the top quartile among elementary schools in Orange County, a meaningful indicator of relative strength, though parents may want to look into the downward trend from third to fifth grade and the notably lower performance in fifth-grade math and science.

The school's enrollment is stable at a small size for its grade band, with roughly even distribution across grades. Kindergarten is somewhat smaller, and third through fifth grades each carry roughly the same larger cohort. Staffing and program details were not available in the data reviewed.

Laguna Beach itself is a high-cost community where housing values are substantially above state and national medians, and rental costs are steep relative to household income. The economy rests on hospitality, healthcare, retail, and the arts. Population has been essentially flat to slightly declining for decades, held back by geography, zoning constraints, and a high proportion of second homes. Daily life is shaped by coastal parks and a free public transit system, including trolleys and on-demand shared rides connecting neighborhoods to the downtown and nearby attractions. The downtown and village areas are quite walkable, though outer hillside neighborhoods require a car. Schools sit integrated into the town rather than set apart, with El Morro and the high school both near the downtown core.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 383%

School 83% · District 82% · ▲ 1 pts above district

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

Grade 472%

School 72% · District 76% · ▼ 4 pts below district

▲ 34 pts above state median · ▲ 18 pts above county median

Grade 553%

School 53% · District 67% · ▼ 15 pts below district

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

English language arts

Grade 375%

School 75% · District 77% · ▼ 1 pts below district

▲ 35 pts above state median · ▲ 25 pts above county median

Grade 481%

School 81% · District 81% · ▲ 1 pts above district

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

Grade 571%

School 71% · District 77% · ▼ 6 pts below district

▲ 26 pts above state median · ▲ 13 pts above county median

Science

Grade 551%

School 51% · District 62% · ▼ 11 pts below district

▲ 23 pts above state median · ▲ 11 pts above county median

This schoolLaguna Beach 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.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 3Lower-income54%Higher-income81%27 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income59%Higher-income88%29 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income64%Higher-income74%11 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income62%Higher-income89%28 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income65%Higher-income74%9 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income41%Higher-income57%16 pp gap