Saltonstall School

Saltonstall School is a K–5 elementary school at 211 Lafayette Street in Salem, MA, serving 412 students — the second-largest of the city's six elementary schools. It sits inside the Salem district, which ranks 288th of 351 Massachusetts districts (18th percentile, 1 star), a bottom-quintile context that frames everything below. In 2025–2026, Saltonstall School itself ranked 597th of 899 state elementary schools (34th percentile, 2 stars) — meaningfully better than its own district's position, but still below the state median. Over the past decade its rank has bounced between the 25th and 50th percentile.

Compared with nearby schools, Saltonstall's most defining metric is math: 29.9% proficiency, 11.2 points below the state (41.1%) and fourth of six in Salem, ahead of only Horace Mann Laboratory and Bentley Academy Innovation School. Its ELA result of 35.0% is second-best in the district behind Carlton and above the district average, while science (30.8%) sits barely above the district line. A mile or two away, Ayers/Ryal Side School in Beverly reaches the 84th percentile on $14,101 per pupil, versus Saltonstall's $19,655, and William A Welch Senior in Peabody posts lower proficiency at lower spending. Within Salem, per-student spending is tightly clustered, so it doesn't distinguish Saltonstall from its own district peers.

Inside the school, a grade-level gap stands out: third-grade math (43.2%) actually beats the state (42.2%), but fourth-grade math (22.9%) is 20.3 points below state, and the upper grades are what pull the overall ranking into the low 30s. Saltonstall's relative results are strongest with its English-learner and Hispanic student populations (52nd and 45th percentile), while its low-income subgroup sits at the 26th percentile and has fallen from the 43rd over three years. The student–teacher ratio also crept up from 12.1 to 13.2 in two years. Note that grade-level figures rest on small cohorts, so single-grade swings are directional rather than precise.