Summary:
ZIP code 01960 is home to 11 public schools serving roughly 5,774 Peabody students from pre-kindergarten through grade 12 — eight elementary schools, one middle school, one high school, and one alternative K–12 program — all inside a single district, Peabody, which ranks 266th of 351 Massachusetts districts (24th percentile, 1 star). Elementary enrollment alone ranges five-fold, from 123 students at Center to 645 at Thomas Carroll, so school size varies enormously within the same city.
Only three schools beat the state average in all three tested subjects (ELA, math, science): West Memorial (65th percentile), South Memorial (64th), and John E Burke (58th) — islands of high performance in a low-ranked district. South Memorial and West Memorial also show the strongest improvement, climbing about 16–24 percentile points over two to three years. Meanwhile Peabody Veterans Memorial High graduates 90.7% of students (district: 83.7%) with roughly half the district dropout rate, even though its test proficiency trails the state badly. On the watch list: William A Welch Senior (14th percentile, flat for three years), Thomas Carroll (16th, and the largest elementary), Captain Samuel Brown (lowest science score among general-education schools, 13.73%), and Peabody P.R.E. (38.6% dropout rate).
For parents, the key takeaway is that the gap between Peabody's best and weakest elementaries (30–43 points) is wider than the gap between the district and the state. Spending does not track with results — Brown spends the most per student ($17,900) yet ranks near the bottom, while John E. McCarthy spends the least and ranks higher. J Henry Higgins Middle is trending downward (44th → 39th → 32nd percentile) even as its feeder elementaries improve, and science is the weakest, most volatile subject citywide. Free/reduced lunch data is missing for every school, so poverty context cannot be factored in.
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