Maplewood Elementary School vs Peninsula Elementary School

Maplewood Elementary School and Peninsula Elementary School are both Portland, Oregon elementary schools serving kindergarten through fifth grade, but their overall ratings tell a clear story: Maplewood Elementary School scores 9.5/10 against Peninsula Elementary School's 9.1/10, a 0.4-point gap that translates into a meaningful state rank difference — Maplewood Elementary School sits at #13 of 1,226 Oregon elementary schools while Peninsula Elementary School ranks #47 of 1,226. Both schools perform in the top 4% of the state, so families choosing between them are comparing two genuinely high-performing campuses, not a strong school against a weak one.

Academically, the gap is more pronounced than the overall ratings suggest. Maplewood Elementary School scores 9.2/10 in academics versus Peninsula Elementary School's 8.2/10 — a full point difference that reflects measurably stronger proficiency outcomes at Maplewood. On growth, however, the schools are essentially tied: Peninsula Elementary School edges ahead 9.9/10 to Maplewood Elementary School's 9.8/10, meaning students at Peninsula are accelerating at a marginally faster rate relative to their starting points. For families prioritizing how much a school moves the needle on individual student trajectories, Peninsula Elementary School is indistinguishable from Maplewood Elementary School on that dimension.

The demographic and resource picture splits sharply. Peninsula Elementary School serves a substantially higher-need population — 64% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch compared to 23% at Maplewood Elementary School. Peninsula also operates with a notably smaller student-teacher ratio of 15.6:1 versus Maplewood Elementary School's 20.1:1, meaning teachers at Peninsula carry 22% fewer students per classroom. Peninsula's enrollment of 234 is also smaller than Maplewood Elementary School's 301, which contributes to that tighter adult-to-child ratio. Families who value smaller class sizes and more individualized attention will find Peninsula Elementary School's structural profile more favorable on those specific metrics.

Both schools span the same grade band — KG through fifth grade — and sit 7.8 miles apart within Portland, making geography the practical separator for most families. The free and reduced lunch gap of 41 percentage points signals that these two campuses draw from meaningfully different neighborhoods and income distributions, which in turn shapes peer cohort, school culture, and the mix of extracurricular programming each campus tends to attract and sustain.