Summary:
Zip code 02871 has four public schools in Portsmouth: two elementary schools, one middle school and one high school, spanning early childhood or kindergarten through grade 12. The schools report strong current results compared with state results, though the high school’s assessments differ from those reported by the other schools. The most important area-wide finding is that every school’s reported 2025–26 results are above the state result for the same subject and assessment.
Melville School stands out among the schools with comparable all-grades RICAS results: it scored 68.6% in ELA and 66.7% in math, leading Howard Hathaway School by 12.9 and 5.9 points, respectively. Portsmouth Middle School is the lowest of those three in both subjects, at 54.6% in ELA and 48.6% in math—14.0 and 18.1 points below Melville. Hathaway still exceeds state results by 22.6 points in ELA and 28.9 in math. Portsmouth High School reports strong results on its own assessments, including 67.3% in 11th-grade science, 36 points above the state.
Recent changes are mixed, rather than a consistent rise or fall: from 2024–25 to 2025–26, Melville’s math result rose 1.2 points while its ELA result fell 3.0; Hathaway’s math fell 6.3 points, and the middle school’s science result fell 7.2. SchoolDigger’s 2025–26 rankings place the high school 5th of 58, the middle school 8th of 68, Melville 14th of 163 and Hathaway 25th of 163; Melville has slipped from 7th in 2023–24 but remains highly ranked. Melville also has a lower student-teacher ratio and free/reduced-lunch rate than Hathaway (12.1 and 15.82%, versus 13.6 and 23.96%); these are contextual observations, not explanations of score differences. Because grade spans and assessments differ, school comparisons are clearest within the RICAS results.
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