Arlington Elementary

Arlington Elementary is a K–4 school at 150 Arlington Street in Lawrence, MA, serving 558 students — the largest of the graded elementary schools in its immediate neighborhood — and it is part of the Lawrence district, which itself ranks 337th of 351 Massachusetts districts.

Academically, Arlington sits at the very bottom of the state: 895th of 899 ranked elementary schools, in the bottom 0.5%. On 2025–26 MCAS, 9.55% of students were proficient in ELA and 5.61% in math — roughly half the district's ELA rate and under a third of its math rate, and about 30 to 35 points below the state. The contrast with nearby schools is striking. John K Tarbox, just 0.21 miles away in the same district and city, posts 19.28% in ELA and 31.71% in math. Henry K. Oliver Elementary, Francis M Leahy Elementary, and Gerard A. Guilmette all beat Arlington in math, and Lawrence Family Development Charter School plus Donald P Timony Grammar and Tenney Grammar School in the Methuen district — all within about a mile — land in the 13th–21st percentile.

Resources do not appear to explain the gap. Arlington has the lowest student-teacher ratio (8.9) among graded local peers and spends in the upper half of the local range, while several higher-performing schools do so with larger classes and, in some cases, less money per student. Math is the sharpest concern and still worsening: 15.31% proficient in 2022–23 down to 5.61% now, with third-grade math at just 2%. Relative performance for English Language Learner students fell from the 22nd percentile to the 5th in a single year, and special-education students now rank at the very bottom of their statewide comparison group. Encouragingly, Arlington was a one-star school at the 18th–25th percentile from 2015 to 2019, showing that better outcomes are achievable for this community.