City Terrace Elementary vs Fifty-Fourth Street Elementary

Fifty-Fourth Street Elementary ranks #18 of 9,533 California schools, placing it in the top 0.2% statewide. City Terrace Elementary ranks #356 of 9,533 — still a strong top-4% placement, but the 338-position gap between these two Los Angeles elementaries is substantial. Fifty-Fourth Street Elementary's overall rating of 9.5/10 sits 0.7 points above City Terrace Elementary's 8.8/10, a difference that reflects meaningfully divergent trajectories rather than a close call.

The academic scores run in the opposite direction: City Terrace Elementary scores 9.0/10 on academics versus Fifty-Fourth Street Elementary's 8.7/10, a 0.3-point edge for City Terrace. The growth score reverses that advantage decisively — Fifty-Fourth Street Elementary posts a perfect 10.0/10 growth score against City Terrace Elementary's 8.4/10. That 1.6-point growth gap is the engine behind Fifty-Fourth Street's higher overall rating, indicating that students there are outpacing expected year-over-year progress by a measurably wider margin than peers at City Terrace.

City Terrace Elementary enrolls 332 students compared to Fifty-Fourth Street Elementary's 232, a 43% larger student body. The student-teacher ratio at City Terrace is 18.4:1 versus 17.8:1 at Fifty-Fourth Street — a modest difference of 0.6 students per teacher. The free and reduced-price lunch rate at Fifty-Fourth Street Elementary is 94%, compared to 75% at City Terrace Elementary, a 19-point gap that signals Fifty-Fourth Street serves a considerably higher-poverty population. That Fifty-Fourth Street achieves a #18 statewide rank with that demographic profile makes its growth score more striking in context.

City Terrace Elementary serves grades KG–05, while Fifty-Fourth Street Elementary extends one year further through grade 6, keeping students in the same building for an additional year before the middle school transition. The two schools sit 10.8 miles apart within Los Angeles, making them a deliberate choice rather than a proximity decision for most families.