Commonwealth Avenue Elementary vs Hoover Street Elementary

Commonwealth Avenue Elementary and Hoover Street Elementary sit 1.0 mile apart in Los Angeles, yet their statewide rankings tell a striking story: Hoover Street Elementary holds the #19 position out of 9,533 California schools, while Commonwealth Avenue Elementary ranks #110 — still an exceptional standing, but 91 positions behind its neighbor. The overall rating gap is narrower than the rank gap suggests, with Hoover Street Elementary edging ahead 9.5 to 9.2 out of 10. Both schools clear a very high bar; the question for parents is which trade-offs matter most.

Academically, the delta is meaningful. Hoover Street Elementary scores a 9.5 out of 10 on academic performance versus Commonwealth Avenue Elementary's 8.5 — a full point difference on a 10-point scale. Growth scores are closer but still favor Hoover Street Elementary: 9.8 versus Commonwealth Avenue Elementary's 9.5. That growth edge is particularly notable given Hoover Street's higher concentration of economic need, suggesting the school is driving strong learning gains even among its most challenged students.

On demographics, both schools serve high-poverty populations, but the gap is significant. Commonwealth Avenue Elementary reports 87% of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch; Hoover Street Elementary's figure is 97% — meaning nearly every student there comes from a low-income household. Enrollment stands at 579 at Hoover Street Elementary versus 506 at Commonwealth Avenue Elementary. The sharpest difference is in classroom density: Commonwealth Avenue Elementary's student-teacher ratio of 17.4:1 gives teachers meaningfully more individual bandwidth than Hoover Street Elementary's 20.0:1 ratio, a difference of nearly three students per class.

Both schools serve grades KG through 05, so the grade span is identical. What distinguishes them at a program and environment level is that ratio gap. A classroom with 17 students per teacher versus 20 changes daily instruction time in real, compounding ways. Families weighing Hoover Street Elementary's elite academic and growth scores against Commonwealth Avenue Elementary's smaller class sizes are choosing between two genuinely high-performing schools with different structural profiles.