Summary:
The Beacon Charter School area includes two small schools in Woonsocket serving grades 6–12: BEACON Charter School serves grades 9–12, and Founders Academy serves grades 6–8. Their results point to very different experiences: BEACON was near state results on several measures, while Founders fell well below the state in every reported subject. The most important area-wide finding is that Founders’ 2025–26 results were substantially below state levels in ELA, math and science.
BEACON stands out most positively in high-school science: 34.9% met the proficiency benchmark, 3.8 percentage points above the state. Its grade 10 PSAT math result was also slightly above state, at 29.8% versus 29.3%. Its clearest weakness was grade 11 SAT math, 15.2% compared with 23.5% statewide. Founders had the lowest state-relative results: its all-grades ELA, math and science results were 8.4%, 7.9% and 11.3%, respectively—24.7, 24.0 and 19.8 points below state. Its ELA gaps were similarly large in grades 6–8, at about 24 points per grade. These figures describe each school against state results, rather than establishing a direct score-to-score comparison.
Recent changes at BEACON were mixed: grade 11 SAT ELA fell from 68.0% to 45.7%, and SAT math from 24.0% to 15.2%, while grade 10 PSAT math rose from 12.5% to 29.8%. SchoolDigger’s rank history also declined for both schools: BEACON moved from 24th of 61 schools to 29th of 58, and Founders from 52nd of 64 to 59th of 68. Enrollment was 203 at BEACON and 158 at Founders; reported student-teacher ratios were 11.9 and 11.2. Founders’ free/reduced-lunch rate was 70.25%, versus 66.01% at BEACON, a contextual difference that does not explain achievement. The schools serve different grades and have different reported measures, so their results are best understood in context.
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