Greystone Elementary School vs Gwin Elementary School

Gwin Elementary School holds a 0.4-point overall rating advantage over Greystone Elementary School — 9.4 versus 9.0 on a 10-point scale — but the more telling figure is where each school sits among Alabama's 1,356 elementary schools. Gwin Elementary School ranks #13 statewide while Greystone Elementary School ranks #43. Both land in the top 4% of the state, making this a comparison between two genuinely high-performing schools, not a clear-cut choice between a strong and a weak option.

The academic-versus-growth split separates the two schools in a meaningful way. Greystone Elementary School edges Gwin Elementary School in raw academic score, 9.3 versus 9.1 — a small but real 0.2-point gap suggesting slightly higher current proficiency levels. Gwin Elementary School more than reverses that deficit on growth, scoring 9.4 to Greystone Elementary School's 8.5, a 0.9-point gap. That growth score measures how much students improve relative to academic peers year over year, so Gwin Elementary School is accelerating student progress at a measurably faster rate even though its proficiency baseline sits a step lower.

The demographic profiles of the two schools diverge substantially. Gwin Elementary School enrolls 516 students compared to Greystone Elementary School's 412, and it serves a higher-need population: 47% of Gwin students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch versus 20% at Greystone Elementary School — a 27-percentage-point difference that reflects meaningfully different socioeconomic contexts. Despite the larger and higher-need enrollment, Gwin Elementary School maintains a lower student-teacher ratio of 12.9:1 against Greystone Elementary School's 14.2:1, meaning Gwin students average more teacher contact per day.

Both Greystone Elementary School and Gwin Elementary School serve grades PK through 5, so families with children spanning multiple elementary years face no structural difference in grade coverage. The 10.1-mile distance between them makes this a deliberate choice rather than a neighborhood convenience decision for most Hoover families.