Best Public Schools in Princeton, MA

Princeton, Massachusetts has just one public school in this data set — Thomas Prince, a K–8 elementary school with 355 students in the Wachusett district — so families in town have a single public-school option that covers both the elementary and middle-grade years. The area summary lists 1 elementary, 0 middle, 0 high, and 0 alternative schools. Because there is only one school, there are no cross-town comparisons to make; the useful comparison is how Thomas Prince stacks up against its own district and against the state.

Thomas Prince generally performs above Massachusetts averages, and science is its clear standout: 60.49% of students were proficient at all grades, 19.51 points above the state and 7.29 points above the district, with 8th-grade science at 64.52 — 25.59 points above the state. Eighth-grade civics is another strength at 64.52% proficient, 24.75 points above the state and 7.05 points above the district, and it improved from 61.90 the prior year. Upper-grade reading is strong too: 6th-grade ELA is 19.31 points above the state, 7th-grade ELA 14.38 points above, and 4th-grade ELA 15.35 points above. All-grade ELA (49.57%) sits essentially even with the district and 9.54 points above the state.

The main concerns are math relative to the district and a sharp year-over-year decline. All-grade math is 46.98% proficient — 5.87 points above the state but 6.78 points below the district. Fifth grade is the clearest weak spot: ELA at 34.00% is 13.03 points below the district and 4.15 points below the state, and math at 36.00% is 16.97 points below the district and 3.50 points below the state. From 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, all-grade ELA fell 9.58 points, math 10.34 points, and science 10.44 points, and the school slipped from 72nd percentile (4 stars) in 2023–2024 to 63rd percentile (3 stars) in 2025–2026, now below the district's 4-star, 72nd-percentile profile. Context: the student-teacher ratio is 12.2 and per-student spending was $13,889 in 2020–2021, though these come from different years than the test scores. Free/reduced lunch data is not reported here, so it is unavailable — not zero.