Summary:
ZIP code 02465 (West Newton, MA) has two public elementary schools, both serving grades K–5 in the Newton school district: Franklin (320 students) and Peirce (249 students). Newton is a highly rated district — 30th of 351 in Massachusetts, in the 91st percentile with 5 stars — so both schools are working from a strong base.
Peirce is the stronger of the two on nearly every measure. In 2025-26 it ranked 130th of 899 elementary schools statewide (86th percentile) versus 256th (72nd) for Franklin, and it outperformed Franklin in all three MCAS subjects: 60.36% vs. 53.89% in English language arts, 62.16% vs. 48.21% in math, and 67.57% vs. 62.16% in science. That 14-percentile-point gap has held for three straight years, so it looks like a stable pattern rather than a one-year fluke. Peirce's biggest edge is in math, where its 3rd and 4th graders performed at roughly district level while Franklin's grade-level math scores clustered near 42–50%. Franklin's clear bright spot is 5th-grade ELA (61.64%), within about a point of the district and only about 3 points behind Peirce.
Both schools beat the state average in every subject — Franklin by 7 to 21 points, Peirce by 20 to 27 — but both also declined from 2024-25, and both slipped in state ranking since 2023-24. Franklin's science fell 12.03 points, the largest swing in the data, while Peirce's science held nearly steady. Franklin has the smaller classes (9.8 students per teacher vs. 11.7), while Peirce spends about $2,356 more per student (2020-21 figures). Grade-level results come from small groups of students, so the All Grades numbers are the more reliable guide. Free/reduced-lunch data is not available, so no economic comparison is possible.
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