Best Elementary Schools in Colrain, MA

Colrain, Massachusetts is a small rural town in Franklin County with just one public elementary school serving local families: Colrain Central, which serves students in grades PK through 6 and enrolls 94 children. It is part of the Mohawk Trail district, which ranks 235th out of 351 districts statewide (33rd percentile, 2 stars). Because there is only one elementary school in the city, there are no in-town comparisons to make — the useful benchmarks are the district, the state, and the school's own prior years. The school reports a student-teacher ratio of 9.9 and per-student spending of $31,395 (2020–2021). Free/reduced lunch data is not reported, so that context is unknown, not zero.

Academically, the school sits above its district but below the state in all three all-grade subjects. ELA is 34.09% proficient versus 31.4% in the district and 40.03% statewide; math is 31.82% versus 30.52% and 41.11%; science is 35.71% versus 21.54% and 40.98%. Science is the standout relative to both benchmarks — 14.17 points above the district and only 5.27 points below the state. Results vary sharply by grade. Sixth grade is very strong: 70% proficient in ELA and 80% in math, both well above the district and state. Fifth grade is much weaker: 21.43% in ELA and 7.14% in math, below the district and far below the state. That 72.86-point gap between 6th- and 5th-grade math is the most striking feature of the data.

The trend lines are encouraging. All-grade math jumped from 19.57% to 31.82% year over year, a 12.25-point gain that lifted the school from below its district to slightly above it, while ELA held roughly steady and stayed above the district. The school's state rank also improved from the 27th percentile (1 star) in 2023–2024 to the 41st percentile (2 stars) in 2025–2026. Parents should keep in mind that with only 94 students, a handful of children can move a grade-level percentage dramatically, so the 6th-grade highs and 5th-grade lows may partly reflect small cohort effects rather than lasting differences in teaching quality.