Melrose

Melrose is a suburban Massachusetts district serving about 3,815 students across 8 schools: six elementary schools (one of them, the Early Childhood Center, serving only PK–K), one middle school, and one high school. The Melrose district as a whole ranks 29th of 351 Massachusetts districts (92nd percentile, 5 stars), so every school-level comparison below is against an already-strong baseline — one where state MCAS proficiency sits near 40–45%.

The standouts are Horace Mann, at the 99th percentile (12th of 899 elementary schools) and roughly double the state in ELA, math, and science, and Winthrop, a 5-star school ranked 27th of 899. Roosevelt is the fastest riser, now at the 94th percentile with 5 stars, while Herbert Clark Hoover (86th) and Lincoln (84th) are 4-star schools that have improved every year. Melrose Middle holds 4 stars and the 81st percentile; its school-wide scores look below the district, but that is a composition effect, since the district figure blends in the very strong elementary grades. Melrose High earns 4 stars with a 98.8% graduation rate and a 0.4% dropout rate.

Every K–5 school improved its statewide percentile in 2025-2026, a district-wide signal rather than a single-school story. Science is a quiet strength: all five elementaries beat the state's 5th-grade figure of 43.07%, and even the lowest, Lincoln at 56.34%, is more than 13 points above it. Spending does not track outcomes — Winthrop has the lowest per-student spending ($11,470) and highest student-teacher ratio (15.8) yet sits in the top 3% of the state, while the Early Childhood Center spends the most ($20,350) and has no test data. Two caveats: spending figures are from 2020-2021, five years older than the achievement data, and free/reduced-price lunch counts are suppressed at all eight schools, so no socioeconomic analysis is possible.