Palos Verdes Intermediate, Palos Verdes Estates CA

Original Research by School Decision on Palos Verdes Intermediate

Palos Verdes Intermediate serves grades six through eight in one of Southern California's most affluent, carefully planned residential communities. The school enrolls a relatively small population for a middle school, drawn from a city master-planned a century ago by the Olmsted Brothers as an exclusive residential colony on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The student body is predominantly white and Asian, with smaller shares of Hispanic and multiracial students. A small portion of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the area's high household wealth.

The school's academic performance stands out in strength. On California's state assessments, proficiency rates across tested subjects and grades cluster in the mid-to-high range. Sixth graders show solid proficiency in math and english language arts, seventh graders dip slightly in math but rise in ELA, and eighth graders recover in math while reaching their highest performance in ELA and demonstrating proficiency in science. Overall, the school's proficiency index places it in the top quartile among districts in Los Angeles County. The trend toward higher proficiency in ELA by grade eight suggests strong literacy instruction or cumulative benefit of the school's curriculum across the grades.

The school is part of the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District, which in November 2024 passed a major facilities bond after voters rejected an earlier, larger bond in 2020. Families moving to the area should know that this bond translates to a lasting property tax increase to fund school repairs, renovations, earthquake and fire safety upgrades, and security improvements. The district explicitly cited aging infrastructure and deteriorating systems as the driver, so the bond represents both an investment in school quality and a cost consideration for homeowners.

The community itself is low-density and car-oriented, with minimal commercial activity. Most retail, services, and employment lie elsewhere on the Peninsula or in greater Los Angeles. Daily life centers on parks, coastal trails, and recreational clubs. The Malaga Cove Library, a historic art-deco building adjacent to a park designed by Olmsted Jr., serves as a civic anchor. Schools are spread across the Peninsula on separate campuses rather than concentrated in a single downtown. Housing values and rents in the zipcode are substantially above state and national benchmarks, and monthly rent-to-income ratios are high, reflecting the area's exclusivity.

Palos Verdes Intermediate is a regular public school offering music as a named arts program; parents may want to visit the school website for fuller program detail. The school's modest enrollment size, strong academic foundation across all three grades, and location in a stable, affluent, low-growth community create a particular environment: academically solid and well-resourced, but within a narrow demographic and economic band, and with new costs attached to facilities maintenance and improvement that will persist for homeowners.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 678%

School 78% · District 74% · ▲ 4 pts above district

▲ 48 pts above state median · ▲ 47 pts above county median

Grade 773%

School 73% · District 74%

▲ 43 pts above state median · ▲ 43 pts above county median

Grade 877%

School 77% · District 72% · ▲ 5 pts above district

▲ 49 pts above state median · ▲ 47 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 674%

School 74% · District 78% · ▼ 4 pts below district

▲ 30 pts above state median · ▲ 29 pts above county median

Grade 780%

School 80% · District 78% · ▲ 2 pts above district

▲ 35 pts above state median · ▲ 35 pts above county median

Grade 885%

School 85% · District 78% · ▲ 7 pts above district

▲ 41 pts above state median · ▲ 39 pts above county median

Science

Grade 873%

School 73% · District 67% · ▲ 6 pts above district

▲ 47 pts above state median · ▲ 49 pts above county median

Social studies

Grade 891%

School 91% · District 88% · ▲ 3 pts above district

▲ 42 pts above state median · ▲ 43 pts above county median

This schoolPalos Verdes Peninsula Unified, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 6Lower-income46%Higher-income77%31 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income68%Higher-income81%13 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income52%Higher-income89%37 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 6Lower-income58%Higher-income80%22 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income59%Higher-income75%16 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income54%Higher-income79%25 pp gap