The top reported proficiency rate is 18% in English language arts. The lowest is 6% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Taft Elementary
Taft Elementary sits on West Keller in Santa Ana, serving kindergarten through sixth grade as a regular public school within Santa Ana Unified. The school draws from one of Orange County's most densely populated and culturally distinct cities, a place where dense residential neighborhoods, a working downtown anchored by government and small business, and a large Mexican-American community shape the everyday environment for families.
The student body is heavily Hispanic, with the vast majority of enrollment from that community, and a substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the economic profile of the surrounding neighborhood. Disaggregated data on English learners and students receiving special education services was not available in what was provided, so families with children in those programs should ask the school directly about support structures.
On the most recent California state assessments, Taft's proficiency results are low across all tested grades and subjects. In reading and language arts, the school's results range from the upper single digits to the upper twenties depending on grade, with no grade clearing a third of students at proficiency. Math results are similar or weaker, with some grade levels in the single digits. Fifth-grade science results are also low. Placed against districts in Orange County, the school's overall proficiency index sits in the bottom quartile of the comparison set. These are the reported numbers, and parents considering the school should ask what interventions and supports are in place, what the school's trajectory looks like year to year, and how individual students are monitored. Trend data was available for only a single year, so no direction of change can be read from what exists here.
Program details were not available in the data provided, so it is not possible to say what enrichment, after-school, or specialized learning options exist at the school itself. Families should ask about those directly.
The district context is worth knowing. Santa Ana Unified voters approved a school facilities bond in November 2024, a long-term commitment to repair and modernize aging school buildings that will affect the physical environment at sites across the district, including Taft, over time. The district also made headlines over its ethnic studies curriculum: it was among the first in California to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement, but in 2025 it agreed to discontinue three high school courses and rebuild them from scratch following a settled lawsuit over allegations of antisemitism and open-meeting violations. That affects high school curriculum, not the elementary experience directly, but it is part of the district picture families in Santa Ana Unified are living with.
Housing near the school sits well above both the state and national medians, with home values and rents that make this part of Orange County costly to buy into. Rent-to-income ratios are high by any national standard. The immediate neighborhood around West Keller is a denser residential area of the city, more car-dependent than downtown but close to Santa Ana's transit and commercial core. The city itself is in an active redevelopment phase, with large mixed-use projects adding housing and commercial space, and the OC Streetcar connection to Garden Grove is publicly reported to be moving toward opening.
Taft is a school where the academic proficiency data raises real questions that families deserve answers to before enrolling. The school serves a community with significant economic need, and the gap between current results and grade-level proficiency is wide across every subject tested. That does not make this the wrong place for every child, but it is the clearest thing the available data communicates, and a parent would be well served to visit, ask about classroom supports for struggling readers and math learners, and understand what the school's own improvement plans look like.
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