Lampson Elementary, Garden Grove CA

Original Research by School Decision on Lampson Elementary

Lampson Elementary is a small kindergarten through fifth-grade school in Garden Grove, Orange County, serving a mostly Hispanic student body in an economically stretched community. About nine in ten students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and roughly one in ten are Asian; this is a low-income, tightly knit neighborhood school with a multicultural makeup anchored by Vietnamese-American and Korean-American populations that define the city.

The school's academic profile shows meaningful weakness across the board. State testing data from 2024-25 reveal that fewer than one in three students overall met proficiency benchmarks in either English language arts or math. Performance varied by grade: third graders showed the lowest proficiency in math and ELA both, while fifth graders scored notably higher in English language arts than their fourth-grade peers did, suggesting either grade-level gains or cohort differences. Fifth-grade science proficiency was low, with fewer than one in five students meeting standards. The consistency of weak performance across subjects and most grades, without comparison to prior years, leaves a parent wanting to understand whether the school has a coherent improvement plan and whether these results reflect recent shifts or a longer-standing pattern. That information was not available.

Lampson's performance sits in the bottom quartile relative to other schools serving tested grades within Orange County districts. The overall proficiency index—a mean across tested subjects and grades—places it well below the county median. A parent might want to look into the school's strategic response to these results and what the school or district is doing to move the needle.

The school is part of Orange Unified, a mid-sized district currently navigating a governance transition. In 2024, district voters recalled two conservative trustees whose majority had adopted a parental-notification policy on transgender students and had moved to ban certain books and symbols; the newly constituted board rescinded the notification policy in November 2024. This reversal reflects a substantial shift in the district's stance on LGBTQ+ issues and classroom materials. For families with strong views on either side of these questions, the direction matters.

Garden Grove itself is a densely populated, established Orange County suburb shaped by postwar development and vibrant Vietnamese-American and Korean-American commercial and residential anchors. Housing in the zip code is costly relative to the region and nation, and rents have climbed faster than home prices in recent months. The neighborhood where Lampson sits is residential, served by local OCTA bus routes and anchored by small parks and neighborhood schools rather than a campus-isolated district center. The city is pursuing mixed-use infill development and affordable-housing projects under state mandate, so the built environment is gradual transformation rather than wholesale change.

Lampson is a neighborhood school without distinction in its academic standing and without magnet or charter status; it serves the children of the surrounding blocks. For families in the area, the choice is whether to stay or seek elsewhere. A parent evaluating this school would want direct conversation with the school leadership about the drivers of the low proficiency numbers and what year-to-year trends actually look like, since only a single year of state data is available here. The school's strengths, if any, in areas outside standardized testing—such as community feel, teacher stability, or particular program offerings—were not documented in the available data.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 320%

School 20% · District 54% · ▼ 34 pts below district

▼ 23 pts below state median · ▼ 36 pts below county median

Grade 424%

School 24% · District 54% · ▼ 31 pts below district

▼ 14 pts below state median · ▼ 30 pts below county median

Grade 529%

School 29% · District 46% · ▼ 17 pts below district

▼ 1 pts below state median · ▼ 17 pts below county median

Grade 634%

School 34% · District 50% · ▼ 16 pts below district

▲ 3 pts above state median · ▼ 13 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 323%

School 23% · District 52% · ▼ 29 pts below district

▼ 17 pts below state median · ▼ 27 pts below county median

Grade 417%

School 17% · District 59% · ▼ 42 pts below district

▼ 25 pts below state median · ▼ 37 pts below county median

Grade 546%

School 46% · District 61% · ▼ 15 pts below district

▲ 1 pts above state median · ▼ 12 pts below county median

Grade 643%

School 43% · District 63% · ▼ 20 pts below district

▼ 1 pts below state median · ▼ 17 pts below county median

Science

Grade 520%

School 20% · District 42% · ▼ 22 pts below district

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

This schoolOrange 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 5Lower-income45%Higher-income55%10 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income42%Higher-income46%4 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 5Lower-income32%Higher-income9%23 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income35%Higher-income25%10 pp gap