The top reported proficiency rate is 12% in English language arts. The lowest is 8% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Harris School
Harris School sits on High School Street in Woonsocket, a compact former mill city built along the Blackstone River in northern Rhode Island. The school serves kindergarten through fifth grade as a regular public school in the Woonsocket district. Woonsocket itself has a layered identity: once a major textile manufacturing center, it retains a strong French-Canadian cultural heritage and now anchors itself around the corporate headquarters of CVS Health and Landmark Medical Center. The city has been investing in Main Street revitalization and street reconstruction, and its dense, walkable downtown sits a short drive from Providence via Route 99. Surrounding suburbs like Lincoln, Cumberland, and North Smithfield have been growing, while Woonsocket's population has stayed relatively stable.
The school's enrollment is moderate for an elementary building, with a fairly even distribution across the six grade levels. About half the student body qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, which gives a sense of the economic context many families are navigating. The student population is diverse: roughly half white, with a substantial Hispanic share, a smaller Black population, and smaller groups identifying as Asian, multiracial, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. We looked for individualized education program rates and English learner rates, but those figures were not reported in the available data, so they are left out here rather than estimated.
On Rhode Island's state assessments, Harris School's results are low across all three subjects tested. In math, a small fraction of tested students reached proficiency on the RICAS. In English language arts, the proficient share was somewhat higher but still low. Fifth-grade science results on the NGSA were the lowest of the three, with only a handful of students demonstrating proficiency. Participation was essentially universal, so the results reflect nearly the full eligible student body rather than a skewed subset. There is only a single year of data available, so no trend can be drawn from the numbers alone. A parent considering Harris may want to ask the school what instructional supports and interventions are in place for reading and math, and how the district is responding to these results. The low proficiency levels are a factual reality of the current picture, and understanding the school's plan for improvement would be a reasonable next step.
No data was available on program offerings, course access, staffing ratios, attendance, discipline, or civil-rights indicators. These gaps mean the portrait of Harris is incomplete in areas that often matter to parents: class sizes, special education services, enrichment or intervention programs, and school climate measures are all absent from the provided data. The district brief also turned up no parent-relevant changes of lasting impact, so there is little to report on recent initiatives or shifts within Woonsocket schools.
The housing market around Harris School is relatively accessible compared with the broader state. Home values in the school's zip code sit well below the Rhode Island benchmark, landing closer to the national figure. Rents are modest, and the rent-to-income ratio suggests renting remains affordable for local households. At the same time, estimated monthly mortgage costs run higher than typical rents, reflecting the current interest-rate environment. Home values have dipped slightly year over year, while rents have risen. For families already in Woonsocket, the cost of living near the school is comparatively manageable. For those considering moving in, the housing is more affordable than much of Rhode Island, though the academic results at Harris are a central factor to weigh.
What Harris offers is a neighborhood elementary school in a working-class, culturally rooted city with active civic investment downtown and affordable housing. The academic data is a soft spot that a family should engage with directly, asking the school what is being done and what supports exist for students working below grade level.
See more original research from School Decision →