Summary:
ZIP code 01863 covers North Chelmsford, Massachusetts, and contains two public schools: Chelmsford High, a grades 9–12 school with 1,402 students, and Charles D Harrington, a grades K–4 elementary school with 468 students. Both belong to the Chelmsford district, which ranks 73 of 351 districts statewide — the 79th percentile — with 4 stars. Notably, the ZIP lists no middle school, so grades 5–8 are presumably served elsewhere in the district.
Chelmsford High is the standout in this area. It holds 4 stars in every reported year and ranked 48 of 353 schools, the 86th percentile, in 2025–2026, after a dip to 79 of 349 (77th percentile) in 2024–2025 and 41 of 348 (88th percentile) in 2023–2024. Its MCAS proficiency is above the state in every reported metric, often by more than 20 percentage points, and it edges the district in nearly all of them. Its graduation rate is 98.8% versus 96.0% for the district, with a 0.9% dropout rate versus 2.6% district-wide.
Charles D Harrington is a solid 3-star school whose percentile climbed from 58 to 58 to 63 across the three reported years. It is above the state average in every MCAS metric but below the district average in all of them — a meaningful distinction given how strong the district is. Its strongest 2025–2026 result was 4th grade mathematics at 52.08; its lowest was 4th grade ELA at 44.68, still above the state's 37.43. It has the lower student-teacher ratio (12.2 versus 13.9) and lower per-student spending ($15,354 versus $16,379 in 2020–2021). Free and reduced lunch data is blank for both schools, so socioeconomic context cannot be compared.
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