Anderson Elementary, Garden Grove CA

Original Research by School Decision on Anderson Elementary

Anderson Elementary is a neighborhood school of modest size serving kindergarten through sixth grade in Garden Grove, a diverse residential city in central Orange County anchored by one of the world's largest Vietnamese-American communities. The school sits within the Westminster School District, which in 2024 completed what it calls the nation's first preschool-through-12th-grade Vietnamese-English bilingual pathway, a defining program option for families in the district.

The school's academic profile reflects substantial challenges. On California's CAASPP assessments in math and English language arts, proficiency rates are low across all tested grades. In math, students show the lowest proficiency in fifth grade, climbing somewhat in sixth grade. In English language arts, third and fourth grades show particularly weak results, while sixth grade performs better. Science proficiency data from fifth grade also sits well below grade-level expectations. Across tested subjects and grades, Anderson's overall proficiency index places it in the bottom quartile when compared to other schools whose data was available in Orange County. The school has only one year of assessment data in this set, so trend information is not available to show whether results are moving or stable.

The student body is predominantly low-income and multilingual. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. The enrollment reflects Garden Grove's cultural makeup, with roughly equal proportions of Hispanic and Asian students, including many from Vietnamese and Korean families. Specific counts for students learning English as an additional language and those receiving special education services were not available in the data.

Garden Grove itself is a built-out postwar suburb with auto-oriented layout, rectangular streets, and wide boulevards. The city is strongly multicultural and economically mixed. Housing values are well above the state median and rents are substantial relative to median household income, placing affordability pressure on working and lower-middle-income families. The school district is among the larger employers in the city, and the city is actively zoning for mixed-use infill development to address state housing mandates.

The Westminster School District offers dual-language immersion options in Spanish and Vietnamese beginning in preschool and infant-toddler care at the Land Early Learning Center and Willmore School, with pathways continuing through elementary, middle, and now high school. This is a long-standing and distinctive offering for families seeking bilingual education. The district also recently adopted formal artificial intelligence guidance policy updates, reflecting how schools approach emerging classroom technology and academic integrity. Anderson Elementary's specific program offerings beyond core instruction were not available in this data, so a parent would want to explore what supplementary support, enrichment, or intervention services the school provides alongside classroom instruction.

A parent considering Anderson would be making a choice based on location, neighborhood fit, and the broader district context rather than on academic strength relative to other options. The very low proficiency rates signal that students are entering elementary with learning gaps and that the school faces substantial challenges in building grade-level skills. This is not uncommon in high-poverty, high-ELL schools serving families new to the country or navigating economic hardship. The school's ability to close those gaps, the intensity of intervention and support it offers, and how it engages families would all be worth asking about directly with the school and district.

See more original research from School Decision →

Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 335%

School 35% · District 51% · ▼ 16 pts below district

▼ 8 pts below state median · ▼ 22 pts below county median

Grade 424%

School 24% · District 48% · ▼ 23 pts below district

▼ 13 pts below state median · ▼ 29 pts below county median

Grade 516%

School 16% · District 40% · ▼ 24 pts below district

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

Grade 633%

School 33% · District 42% · ▼ 9 pts below district

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

English language arts

Grade 316%

School 16% · District 49% · ▼ 33 pts below district

▼ 24 pts below state median · ▼ 34 pts below county median

Grade 422%

School 22% · District 50% · ▼ 28 pts below district

▼ 20 pts below state median · ▼ 32 pts below county median

Grade 527%

School 27% · District 57% · ▼ 30 pts below district

▼ 19 pts below state median · ▼ 31 pts below county median

Grade 641%

School 41% · District 53% · ▼ 11 pts below district

▼ 2 pts below state median · ▼ 19 pts below county median

Science

Grade 516%

School 16% · District 34% · ▼ 18 pts below district

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

This schoolWestminster, 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-income16%Higher-income18%3 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income32%Higher-income46%14 pp gap