Summary:
ZIP code 01331 contains a single elementary school — Athol Community Elementary School — which serves grades PK–4 with 589 students in Athol, Massachusetts, as part of the Athol-Royalston district. Because it is the only elementary school in the area, there are no local peers to compare it against; the meaningful comparisons are to its district and to the state.
The school's state ranking has slipped over three years: 785 of 916 (14th percentile, 1 star) in 2023-2024, 795 of 906 (12th percentile, 1 star) in 2024-2025, and 843 of 899 in 2025-2026, which is the 6th percentile with a 0-star rating — the bottom 6% of ranked Massachusetts schools. Proficiency dropped in both subjects from 2024-2025 to 2025-2026: all-grade ELA fell 5.14 percentage points to 13.64%, and all-grade math fell 4.58 points to 18.89%, compared with smaller district declines and, in math, a slight statewide increase. Math is the relative bright spot within the district, edging above district averages in both reported years (18.89% vs 18.6% in 2025-2026; 23.47% vs 20.55% in 2024-2025) and in grade 3 math, though it still trails the state by 17–25 percentage points. ELA is the clearer weakness: all-grade ELA was below the district in both years, and grade 4 ELA in 2025-2026 was just 6.78% proficient versus 8.33% for the district and 37.43% for the state — the lowest result reported for the school.
For context, the district itself ranks 316 of 351 (10th percentile, 1 star). The student-teacher ratio is 13.9, and per-student spending was $17,580 in 2020-2021, though no comparison figures are provided. The free/reduced lunch percentage is not reported for 2024-2025, so socioeconomic context cannot be assessed. Grade-level data cover only one year, so the gap between grade 4 ELA (6.78%) and grade 3 ELA (21.57%) cannot be attributed to a specific cause. Parents should treat these figures as a starting point and combine them with school visits and direct questions about curriculum and intervention supports.
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