Summary:
ZIP code 01464, which covers Shirley, Massachusetts, contains exactly one middle school: Ayer Shirley Regional Middle School. It serves about 410 students in grades 6 through 8 — roughly 137 per grade — at 1 Hospital Road, and it belongs to the Ayer Shirley School District. Because there is only one school here, there is no in-area peer to compare it against; the meaningful benchmarks are the district and the state.
The school's clearest strength is 8th-grade science, where 47.2% of students scored proficient — about 6 points above the statewide 40.98% and more than 8 points above the state's 8th-grade figure. Eighth-grade civics is similarly strong at 46.77% versus 39.77% statewide, and 7th-grade ELA beats the state by nearly 5 points. Class sizes look favorable, with a 12.4:1 student-teacher ratio in 2024-25. Over the past three years the school has held a 3-star rating and ranked between the 61st and 67th percentile of Massachusetts middle schools — solidly above average, though not in the top tier.
Mathematics is the weak spot. At 38.64% proficient, the school trails both its district (40.78%) and the state (41.11%), and it slipped while the state improved — the most concerning trend in the data. The gap is widest in 6th-grade math, at 36.50% versus 42.59% statewide. Eighth grade is unusually uneven: strong in science and civics, but below state level in ELA and math. Two cautions for parents: the sharp one-year science decline likely reflects a different tested cohort rather than a change in instruction, since science is only tested in 8th grade, and the free/reduced-lunch field is blank, so no economic context is available. Spending data dates to 2020-21 and is too old to be meaningful today.
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