Joseph A. Gascon Elementary, Los Angeles CA

Original Research by School Decision on Joseph A. Gascon Elementary

Joseph A. Gascon Elementary is a small public school serving kindergarten through fifth grade in the East Los Angeles area. It enrolled about five hundred students last year, spread nearly evenly across all six grade levels. The student body is almost entirely Hispanic, and nearly four out of five students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, indicating substantial family economic need in the area.

The school's academic results show low proficiency across tested subjects. In English language arts, students in grades three through five achieved proficiency rates in the low to mid-thirties, with fourth grade performing slightly better than third and fifth. Math proficiency was lower, ranging from the mid-twenties to just under thirty percent across grades three through five. Fifth-grade science proficiency, the only grade where science is tested, fell to around nineteen percent. These are the only state assessment results available; kindergarten and first and second grade are not state-tested in California.

Among schools serving comparable grade ranges that report data to the state within Los Angeles County, Gascon's overall proficiency index places it in the bottom quartile. This is a real performance gap that deserves attention. A parent considering this school would want to speak directly with the school and district about how they are addressing these numbers, what instructional changes or additional supports are underway, and what progress has been made in recent years. One potentially relevant context is that Montebello Unified, which operates Gascon, recently won a multi-year California Community Schools Partnership grant designed to extend learning time, integrate student support services, and introduce culturally rooted instructional practices at select schools. It is worth asking whether Gascon is among the schools benefiting from this initiative and, if so, what that looks like in practice.

The neighborhood around the school is characteristic of East LA: dense, predominantly Latino, working-class, and family-oriented. Housing values in the local zip code are moderate relative to California, and rents have declined slightly over the past year. The area is served by public transit and sits within a city that, despite its reputation for car dependency, has pockets of walkable neighborhood life and is undergoing active housing growth and policy changes aimed at increasing density.

Data on special education enrollment, English learner populations, chronic absenteeism, discipline, and school staffing were not available, so a reader should seek that directly from the school. The school website, if one exists, was not provided in the available information.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 325%

School 25% · District 36% · ▼ 10 pts below district

▼ 18 pts below state median · ▼ 21 pts below county median

Grade 429%

School 29% · District 29%

▼ 8 pts below state median · ▼ 12 pts below county median

Grade 526%

School 26% · District 27% · ▼ 1 pts below district

▼ 5 pts below state median · ▼ 8 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 332%

School 32% · District 31% · ▲ 1 pts above district

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

Grade 436%

School 36% · District 32% · ▲ 4 pts above district

▼ 7 pts below state median · ▼ 8 pts below county median

Grade 532%

School 32% · District 34% · ▼ 2 pts below district

▼ 14 pts below state median · ▼ 15 pts below county median

Science

Grade 519%

School 19% · District 20% · ▼ 1 pts below district

▼ 9 pts below state median · ▼ 8 pts below county median

This schoolMontebello 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 4Lower-income34%Higher-income42%8 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 4Lower-income28%Higher-income32%3 pp gap