The top reported proficiency rate is 45% in Science. The lowest is 40% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Helen Hansen Elementary
Helen Hansen Elementary is a regular public school in Stoughton serving kindergarten through fifth grade. It draws its students from a suburban town about a moderate drive south of Boston, a place that began as an agricultural settlement and later became a 19th-century shoemaking center. Today Stoughton blends residential neighborhoods, industrial pockets, and protected open spaces such as the Bird Street Sanctuary and a municipal golf course. The town has a defined downtown around a historic train station, though the station lost its MBTA commuter rail service some years ago, making the area largely auto-dependent. The school itself is one of several elementaries within the Stoughton district.
On the state’s NextGen MCAS assessments, Helen Hansen’s results place the school below the midpoint in overall proficiency among elementary schools in Norfolk County districts. For the most recent testing year, about two out of five students met or exceeded expectations in English language arts, and a slightly higher share did so in math. Science proficiency, tested only at grade five, was similar to the math figure. These are modest numbers: a parent comparing schools across the county will find that a majority of district elementary schools post higher overall success rates. Looking back across available years—records run from several years before the pandemic to the present—proficiency in both ELA and math has moved up and down. Math has occasionally reached the midpoint or a bit above, then slipped back; ELA has stayed below that typical mark for most of the past several years. The multi-year picture is one of inconsistency rather than a clear upward or downward trend.
Helen Hansen enrolls about a couple hundred students across the elementary grades. The student body is majority white, with a substantial black population, a smaller but notable Hispanic share, and Asian and multiracial groups each making up under ten percent. Data on students who qualify for free or reduced-price meals, as well as students with disabilities or English learners, were not available in the public record for this school. A family looking into support programs or the economic profile of the school would want to ask directly about those resources.
The housing market around the school reflects Norfolk County’s overall expense. Home values are well above national medians and have been edging higher. Rent is also high, with the estimated monthly cost consuming a notable fraction of a typical household income. The town has experienced some new residential development and an emerging retail cluster, but the most prominent recent public investment was the construction of a new Stoughton High School, completed a few years ago. That project carries substantial ongoing debt service, a financial reality for the district and its taxpayers that any family looking at the town’s long-term fiscal health should consider.
Helen Hansen offers no special programmatic flags in the data: it is a regular elementary school without charter, magnet, or Title I status listed. Information on class sizes, staffing ratios, discipline incidents, and course offerings beyond the core academic subjects was not available. The school’s website would be the natural next step for a parent wanting to understand the day-to-day environment, after-school activities, and how the school supports students who are below the bar on state testing—an area where the school’s results suggest room for attention.
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