CEDAR CREST EL vs LAKEWOOD EL

Lakewood El ranks #78 of 8,547 Texas schools while Cedar Crest El sits at #116 — both placing in the top 2% statewide, but Lakewood El holds a clear edge in overall rating at 9.3/10 against Cedar Crest El's 9.2/10. That one-tenth-point gap understates how differently the two schools perform across individual dimensions; parents who dig into the subscores find a more pronounced divergence than the headline numbers suggest.

Academically, Lakewood El pulls significantly ahead: a 9.9/10 academic score versus Cedar Crest El's 8.7/10 — a 1.2-point gap that reflects meaningfully higher proficiency on state assessments. Cedar Crest El answers with a 10.0/10 growth score, the highest possible, compared to Lakewood El's 8.9/10. That reversal matters: Cedar Crest El is producing exceptional year-over-year learning gains relative to comparable students, a signal that instruction is highly effective even if incoming proficiency levels are lower.

The demographic contrast between the two schools is stark. Cedar Crest El enrolls 373 students with a free and reduced-price lunch rate of 99%, serving an almost entirely economically disadvantaged population. Lakewood El enrolls 960 students — more than two and a half times as many — with an FRL rate of just 8%. Cedar Crest El's student-teacher ratio of 11.3:1 gives it a meaningful structural advantage in classroom attention over Lakewood El's 14.8:1, a gap of more than three students per teacher.

Beyond demographics, the two schools differ in grade configuration. Cedar Crest El serves Pre-K through 6th grade, adding a pre-kindergarten entry point and an additional year of elementary that Lakewood El does not offer. Lakewood El runs Kindergarten through 5th grade only. The two campuses sit 6.7 miles apart within Dallas, making a cross-town transfer logistically possible but not casual.