The top reported proficiency rate is 25% in English language arts. The lowest is 20% in Social studies.
Original Research by School Decision on Lafayette School
Lafayette School serves students from kindergarten through eighth grade in Everett, a dense, small city directly north of Boston. It is a regular public school within the Everett Public Schools district, and its grade span means it functions as an elementary and middle school combined, feeding into Everett High School. The school sits on a residential street in a city that mixes walkable commercial corridors along Broadway with industrial waterfront uses, including the Encore Boston Harbor casino and the Mystic Generating Station.
The student body is predominantly Hispanic, with a substantial share of Black and White students, a smaller Asian population, and a very small number of students of two or more races and American Indian or Alaska Native. Data on free or reduced-price lunch eligibility, special education status, and English learner status was not available for this school, so a full picture of economic and linguistic need cannot be drawn from the reported figures alone. The school enrolls a large number of students spread across grades K through 8, making it one of the larger schools in the district by total enrollment.
On state assessments administered through the Massachusetts Next Generation MCAS, Lafayette School posted proficiency rates that place well below the midpoint when compared to other schools across Middlesex County districts. In math, about a fifth of students scored at proficient or above. In English language arts, about a quarter did. Science proficiency was similar, and among eighth graders taking the social studies assessment, roughly a fifth were proficient. The district’s overall proficiency index for this school lands in the bottom quartile among districts in Middlesex County, a broad suburban and urban region that includes many high-performing systems. A look at available trend data going back several years shows that proficiency rates in both math and ELA have fluctuated within a generally low range, without a clear upward trajectory in recent years. The most recent year’s results are consistent with that pattern. Because Lafayette School does not serve high school grades, there is no graduation rate to report.
The school operates in a city that has seen steady population growth as families seek housing near Boston at lower costs than Cambridge, Somerville, or Boston proper. Everett’s housing market reflects that demand: home values and rents are elevated relative to national benchmarks, though still below the most expensive inner suburbs. In November 2024, Everett voters approved a Proposition 2½ override, authorizing property taxes above the state levy limit specifically to fund schools and municipal services, a direct and ongoing cost for homeowners and renters. The district has also invested in new programming in response to a surge in English language learners, rolling out Spanish-English dual-language programs across several schools and expanding ESL staffing. At the high school level, the city has recently modernized Everett High School with new career and technical education facilities, including culinary arts, medical arts, and technology labs. While those investments do not directly affect Lafayette School, they signal district-wide priorities that families may want to consider when thinking about the full K-12 pathway.
For a parent evaluating Lafayette School, the central fact is the academic performance data: proficiency rates are low across all tested subjects and grade levels, and the school sits in the bottom quarter of its county for overall performance. A family moving to Everett should look into what academic support and intervention programs the school offers, how it serves students who are not yet meeting grade-level standards, and what the school’s approach is to accelerating learning. The lack of publicly available data on special education and English learner populations at the school level is a gap worth raising directly with the district. The school’s size and urban setting, the city’s ongoing growth and development, and the district’s dual-language expansion are all characteristics that will appeal to some families and not others, but the test results present a clear challenge that any prospective family would want to understand in depth.
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