Summary:
ZIP code 02864 has 12 schools serving elementary, middle and high school students, with eight elementary schools, two middle schools and two high schools. Results are uneven: the eight elementary schools’ average grade 3 and grade 4 ELA and math proficiency is above the state result, but individual schools vary widely. The most important finding for families is that the school a child attends matters greatly: strong area averages do not mean results are similar at every school.
Community School stands out among elementary schools, leading in grade 3 ELA (75.0%) and math (85.3%); B.F. Norton Elementary School had the lowest grade 3 results, at 27.1% and 25.4%—gaps of 47.9 and 59.9 percentage points. Community also led the reported all-grades elementary results and had a SchoolDigger rank of 1 of 163 statewide. At middle level, North Cumberland Middle exceeded Joseph L. McCourt Middle School by 20.7 points in ELA, 23.5 in math and 23.0 in science; SchoolDigger ranked them 2nd and 14th of 68. Cumberland High School also had stronger listed results than Blackstone Valley Prep High in grade 11 SAT ELA (61.0% vs. 50.0%), math (28.5% vs. 22.4%) and graduation (91.1% vs. 86.5%).
Recent results are mixed rather than consistently rising: elementary all-grades ELA increased by an average of 1.9 points from 2024–25 to 2025–26, while math fell by 2.2; high-school SAT ELA and math averages fell by 6.0 and 7.7 points. SchoolDigger rankings moved differently: Blackstone Valley Prep Element rose from the 16th to the 58th percentile, while Cumberland High fell from the 79th to the 69th. Context also varies: Community’s student–teacher ratio was 16.5, compared with McCourt’s 10.4, and the three Blackstone Valley Prep elementary schools reported lunch rates of about 80%–85% alongside differing grade-level results. These figures describe context, not causes, and school-year differences mean they should not be treated as direct explanations of test results.
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