The top reported proficiency rate is 55% in Math. The lowest is 44% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Crestwood Elementary School
Crestwood Elementary sits on North Manhattan Avenue in Tampa's northwest quadrant, serving pre-kindergarten through fifth grade as a regular public school in Hillsborough County Schools. The enrollment is sizeable for an elementary school, with every grade from kindergarten through fifth well-populated. The student body is predominantly Hispanic, with smaller shares of Black, white, Asian, and multiracial students. A large majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which means the school is working with a student population that carries significant economic need. Data on English learners and students with IEPs were not available in what we reviewed.
On Florida's FAST assessments, Crestwood's math proficiency results sit around or just above the midpoint across tested grades, which is a middling picture rather than a strong one. Reading and language arts tell a softer story: third-grade ELA proficiency comes in around half, fifth grade below that, and fourth grade is the lowest point reported, well under half of students scoring proficient. Fifth-grade science proficiency is also below half. These are the most recent results available and should be weighed alongside the school's economic context, since schools serving high concentrations of low-income families often face structural headwinds that single-year proficiency snapshots don't fully capture. Parents who want to understand whether proficiency has been improving, holding steady, or declining will need to ask the school directly, as multi-year trend data was not available.
No program-specific information was in the data we reviewed, such as special enrichment tracks, dual-language offerings, or gifted programming. Those are worth asking about, particularly given that a substantial share of students may be English learners, though that rate itself was not reported.
Crestwood is part of Hillsborough County Schools, one of the largest districts in Florida. Two changes in the last few years are directly relevant to families. First, the district carried out a major boundary rezoning for the 2024-25 school year, affecting boundaries at a large number of schools and moving substantial numbers of students; any family checking Crestwood's zone should verify current assignments directly with the district. Second, voters approved a one-mill property tax increase in November 2024, running through mid-2029, aimed specifically at raising teacher and support staff pay. This adds a meaningful annual cost for homeowners and represents a real change to how the district funds compensation. Publicly reported accounts indicate this came after a similar measure narrowly failed a few years earlier.
The housing market around the school's zip code shows home values running close to the Florida statewide median, with a modest year-over-year decline. Rents have also edged down slightly year over year, though they remain at a level where a renter's housing costs consume a notable share of income relative to national benchmarks. Tampa broadly is an active city with a growing downtown, major employers in healthcare, defense, and finance, and distinct neighborhoods with varying characters. The area around North Manhattan Avenue is a residential part of northwest Tampa, away from the downtown cultural core and the waterfront districts that draw most of the civic-life attention.
Because Hillsborough County has only one public school district, the comparison set for positioning Crestwood against neighboring districts is not meaningful here; there is no peer district within the county to compare against.
For a family evaluating Crestwood, the honest picture is a school with moderate math results and softer reading results serving a community with high economic need, inside a district that has recently restructured boundaries and passed new funding for teacher pay. A parent who wants a fuller view of what's driving the ELA numbers, what supports are in place for students below grade level, and what enrichment exists for students who are ahead would be well-served asking those questions directly of the school.
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