Emperor Elementary, San Gabriel CA

Original Research by School Decision on Emperor Elementary

Emperor Elementary sits on Muscatel Avenue in San Gabriel, a city in the San Gabriel Valley whose daily texture is shaped by a dense restaurant corridor along Valley Boulevard, the historic Mission District anchored by Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, and a mix of residential neighborhoods and commercial strips. Publicly reported sources describe the city as one where most people get around by car, though the Mission District and pockets near Valley Boulevard and Las Tunas offer enough within walking distance to feel like a neighborhood on foot. The city is in a sustained growth phase, with several mixed-use apartment and commercial projects coming along its main corridors, the largest of which is a two-building development on San Gabriel Boulevard on the site of a former nursery, with completion targeted for the mid-2020s.

The school is a regular public elementary serving kindergarten through sixth grade, part of Temple City Unified. Its enrollment is moderately sized for a K-6 campus. The student body is predominantly Asian, with a meaningful Hispanic population and smaller shares of white and multiracial students. Roughly two in five students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which means the school serves a genuinely mixed economic range, leaning toward lower-middle and middle income rather than concentrated poverty. Data on English learner rates and students with IEPs were not available in the materials provided, so a parent interested in those populations should ask the school directly.

On the California state assessments, the school's results are worth reading carefully by grade. Third-grade math is a clear strength, with proficiency sitting well above the statewide midpoint. Sixth-grade math and sixth-grade English language arts are also strong, with sixth-grade ELA standing out as the highest single-grade result the school posts. The middle grades tell a slightly different story: fourth and fifth grade math and ELA proficiency rates are meaningfully lower than the bookend grades, which is worth raising with the school to understand whether that reflects class composition, transition years, or something else. Fifth-grade science proficiency lands roughly in the middle range. Across all tested subjects and grades combined, Emperor's overall proficiency index places it in the top quartile relative to districts in Los Angeles County, which is a meaningful position in a large and diverse county. Only one year of data was available, so trend direction cannot be assessed.

Because the school serves only through sixth grade, there is no graduation rate to report. AP course access, dual enrollment, and career pathways are not applicable at this level and are not in the data.

The district context is worth noting for families making a longer-term enrollment decision. Temple City Unified publicly launched a Mandarin Dual Language Immersion program beginning in the 2025-26 school year, structured as a roughly equal split between Mandarin and English instruction starting in kindergarten, with the stated goal of producing bilingual and biliterate students. Given that the school's student body skews heavily toward Asian families, many with Mandarin-speaking households, this program addition is likely to draw real interest. The program appears to be open to both native Mandarin speakers and native English speakers entering kindergarten. A family considering enrollment should confirm at which campus or campuses the program is housed, since the materials do not specify whether Emperor is one of them.

Housing in the zip code surrounding the school is expensive. Home values run well above the California statewide median and several times the national median, with year-over-year appreciation continuing. Rents are also elevated, and the rent-to-income ratio in the area implies that renting consumes a substantial share of a typical household's income. Families comparing this area with neighboring parts of the San Gabriel Valley should factor in that housing costs here are among the higher end even within Los Angeles County.

Discipline data, attendance rates, and staffing ratios were not available in the materials provided, so those dimensions of the school environment cannot be characterized here.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 377%

School 77% · District 69% · ▲ 8 pts above district

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

Grade 461%

School 61% · District 63% · ▼ 2 pts below district

▲ 23 pts above state median · ▲ 20 pts above county median

Grade 560%

School 60% · District 62% · ▼ 2 pts below district

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

Grade 677%

School 77% · District 71% · ▲ 7 pts above district

▲ 47 pts above state median · ▲ 46 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 360%

School 60% · District 64% · ▼ 4 pts below district

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

Grade 466%

School 66% · District 62% · ▲ 4 pts above district

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

Grade 566%

School 66% · District 71% · ▼ 5 pts below district

▲ 20 pts above state median · ▲ 19 pts above county median

Grade 689%

School 89% · District 77% · ▲ 12 pts above district

▲ 45 pts above state median · ▲ 44 pts above county median

Science

Grade 557%

School 57% · District 53% · ▲ 3 pts above district

▲ 28 pts above state median · ▲ 29 pts above county median

This schoolTemple City 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-income47%Higher-income68%21 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income55%Higher-income74%19 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income48%Higher-income74%26 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income85%Higher-income92%6 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income69%Higher-income81%12 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income47%Higher-income71%23 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income39%Higher-income72%33 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income76%Higher-income78%3 pp gap