Summary:
ZIP code 02062 is home to six elementary schools in the Norwood district, serving roughly 1,673 students across schools that range from 247 to 339 children. Five of them — F A Cleveland, Balch, Charles J Prescott, John P Oldham, and Cornelius M Callahan — serve grades 1–4 and report MCAS results. George F. Willett serves grades K–1 only, so it has no test scores or achievement data and cannot be compared academically. All six share one district rating: 2 stars, 33rd percentile statewide (rank 234 of 351), which describes the Norwood district overall rather than any individual school.
On 2025–26 tests, math is the local strength and English language arts the weakness. Every tested school exceeds the district math average (32.28%), and F A Cleveland (46.49%) and John P Oldham (41.67%) also beat the state's 41.11%. The best ELA result belongs to Charles J Prescott (38.64%), the only school above 40% in 4th-grade ELA — and it achieves this on the lowest per-student spending ($18,529). Cornelius M Callahan posts the top science score (55.81% in 2024–25, about 14 points above the state) alongside the highest spending ($20,283). Balch is the lowest performer on nearly every measure, rated 1 star in all three years, with the lowest 4th-grade ELA (24.62%). No school in the group reaches the state ELA average.
Rankings have trended downward district-wide since 2023–24: Cleveland fell 25 percentile points, Prescott 23, and Oldham and Callahan 14 each, while Balch gained 12 points from a low starting base. Proficiency itself moved in both directions year over year, so a single year's rank is a shaky measure of school quality. Two cautions for parents: free/reduced-price lunch is unreported for all six schools, and the spending figures come from 2020–21, years before the test data, so they cannot be linked to achievement.
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