Summary:
Zip code 02451 in Waltham, MA has two elementary schools, both serving grades K–5: Douglas MacArthur Elementary School and Thomas R Plympton Elementary School. Together they enroll 832 students—Douglas MacArthur 475 and Plympton 357—in the Waltham district. Both schools improved their state rank over three years. Douglas MacArthur is the stronger overall: it ranked 372 of 899 in 2025–2026, at the 59th percentile with 3 stars, up from the 50th percentile. Thomas R Plympton ranked 557 of 899, at the 38th percentile with 2 stars, up from the 26th percentile.
Academically, English Language Arts is the biggest divide. In all-grade 2025–2026 MCAS, Douglas MacArthur scored 51.84 in ELA versus Plympton’s 29.09, a 22.75-point gap. At Grade 5, MacArthur scored 56.52 versus Plympton’s 22.45. Math is nearly tied and is a bright spot for both: MacArthur 43.75, Plympton 43.29, both above the district’s 40.26 and the state’s 41.11. Plympton has standout math pockets: Grade 4 math 56.36, the strongest math result in the data, and Grade 3 math 40.98, both above MacArthur. MacArthur leads Grade 5 math at 46.74. Science is the shared weakness: both schools score around 29 in all-grade and Grade 5 science, below district and far below state.
Plympton spends more per student—$23,136 in 2020–2021—than MacArthur’s $21,642, about $1,494 more, and has a lower student-teacher ratio of 10.1 versus 11.4. Even so, MacArthur has the higher overall rank and much stronger ELA results. That comparison is not causal; spending and ratio come from different years and many factors affect outcomes. Free/reduced-lunch data is blank for both schools, so economic context is unknown, not zero. Overall, Douglas MacArthur is the stronger choice on overall rank and ELA, Thomas R Plympton shows math strengths but weaker ELA, and science is the clearest area of concern for both.
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