Frank M Sokolowski Elementary

Frank M Sokolowski Elementary is a grades 1–4 school in Chelsea, MA, serving 472 students as part of Chelsea Public Schools, a district ranked 321 of 351 in Massachusetts (9th percentile). The school itself ranks 827 of 899 elementary schools statewide in 2025–2026 — the 8th percentile, or bottom decile — and its rank history shows long-term low performance with no sustained improvement. Over the past decade it has generally sat between the 5th and 13th percentile, mostly with 0 stars.

In 2025–2026, MCAS Next Generation proficiency was 13.27% in ELA (versus 17.98% district and 40.03% state) and 21.78% in math (versus 21.96% district and 41.11% state). That makes ELA the bigger weakness relative to both district and state, while math lands almost exactly at the Chelsea district average. A notable red flag is 3rd-grade math, where proficiency was 15.09% versus 37.42% in the district and 42.19% statewide — far below the school's own 4th-grade math figure of 27.73%.

The most important local insight is that similar schools nearby do far better. William A Berkowitz Elementary and Edgar F. Hooks Elementary are in the same Chelsea district, with comparable spending and similar or higher student-teacher ratios, yet their math proficiency is 56–62% — roughly two-and-a-half to three times Sokolowski's — and their ELA is about twice as high. Bradley Elementary School in Boston, about 0.89 miles away, ranks in the 76th percentile with 57.25% ELA and 63.77% math. George F. Kelly Elementary is the one nearby school with lower ELA (14.15%), and its math (17.14%) is also below Sokolowski's. Subgroup results are uneven: English Language Learner students ranked in the 35th percentile and homeless students in the 77th percentile in 2025–2026, but special education fell to the 0th percentile and low-SES students remain around the 20th percentile.