Middle Schools in Leicester

Leicester has a single middle-level school serving grades 5–8: Leicester Middle, a 394-student building at 174 Paxton Street that draws from the Leicester district, which ranks 260th of 351 districts statewide (26th percentile, 1 star) and spends $14,467 per student. Because there is only one middle school in the area, there is no cross-school comparison to make — instead, the key question is how this school performs against state expectations.

Test results for 2025–2026 show the school below the Massachusetts average in every core subject: ELA at 24.47% proficient (15.56 points below state), Math at 23.14% (17.97 points below), and Science at 28.00% (12.98 points below). The one clear bright spot is 8th grade Civics at 43.4%, the only result above the state line (39.77%) and the only subject that improved year over year, up 6.36 points. Notably, the school's scores closely track its own district — slightly below it in ELA and Math, slightly above in Science and Civics — suggesting these results reflect a district-wide pattern rather than a single building's problem. By grade, performance climbs steadily from grade 5 (15.79% ELA, 13.83% Math — roughly a third to two-fifths of state rates) to grade 8 (31.53% ELA, 29.63% Math), so the youngest students start furthest behind.

The trend line is the biggest concern: Science fell 11.18 points in one year, Math 6.24, and ELA 4.56, widening the core-subject gap from 8.73 to 15.51 points against the state. The school holds a steady 2-star rating, though its rank percentile has slipped from 44 to 38 over three years. Parents should know the free/reduced-lunch rate is not reported, so economic context is unavailable, and the spending figure dates to 2020–2021.