Summary:
ZIP code 01821 is home to two middle schools — Marshall Middle School (596 students) and Locke Middle (531 students) — both serving grades 5–7 within the Billerica district, which ranked 175 of 351 (50th percentile, 3 stars). Together they enroll 1,127 students in grades 5–7.
Locke is the overall proficiency standout. In 2025–2026 it scored above both district and state in all-grade ELA (46.86%), math (45.25%), and science (44.57%), and it beat Marshall in every all-grade subject in both 2025–2026 and 2024–2025. Locke's strongest single result is 5th-grade math at 54.86% proficient — well above the district's 46.82% and the state's 39.5% — and it also has the smaller classes (student-teacher ratio 10.8 vs. 11.7). Marshall's strengths are more grade-specific: it holds the highest reported 2025–2026 7th-grade ELA result at 51.55% (Locke 42.94%, district 46.42%, state 39.91%) and leads in 6th-grade math at 48.44% versus Locke's 43.09%. But Marshall's science is a weak spot at 38.63%, below the district's 44.22% and the state's 40.98%, and its 7th-grade math (34.02%) trails the state's 37.48%.
Both schools declined from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026 across all-grade subjects, with science falling hardest — Marshall down 10.32 points and Locke down 10.80 — while district and state science barely moved. One curiosity: Marshall ranks slightly higher than Locke (153 vs. 163; 68th vs. 66th percentile, both 3 stars) even though Locke's reported proficiency is higher, likely reflecting different ranking methods. Marshall also spends more per student in the available 2020–2021 data ($20,717 vs. $19,068), though that does not establish cause. Free/reduced-lunch figures are blank for both schools, so socioeconomic context cannot be compared from this data.
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