60%

Not Proficient
ELA Statewide

59%

Not Proficient
Math Statewide

246

Districts Below
50% Proficiency

70%

Districts Under
Half Proficient

+27%

Spending Above
Required

56%

Homeschool
Growth 2019-25

Current MCAS Performance (2026)

District Performance Distribution — ELA

System-wide failure: 246 of 351 districts (70%) have fewer than half of students meeting standards. Only 4 reach 75%+ proficiency.

Every Subject Tested — Statewide, 2026

Year-over-Year Change — 2025 to 2026 (percentage points)

Change in the share meeting or exceeding, by subject. Bars below the line are declines.

Nothing clears 45%: Grade 10 ELA is the state's best result at 45% meeting expectations. ELA 3-8 and Civics are the weakest at 40%. On all seven tests, most Massachusetts students are not meeting grade-level expectations.

-6.4%

Traditional
Public Schools

+56%

Homeschooling
Increase

+18%

Vocational-Tech
Growth

+11%

Charter School
Enrollment

K-12 Enrollment Change (2019-2025)

Families voting with their feet: Traditional public schools lost 6.4% enrollment while homeschooling exploded 56%. Parents are fleeing a failing system.

Who Massachusetts Serves — Selected Populations, 2025-26

More than half the state is high-needs: 55.4% of Massachusetts students are classified high needs, 41.1% low income, 21.1% students with disabilities and 13.4% English learners. Any statewide average is an average of that population, not of the districts people picture.

37%

Grade 4 ELA
Statewide Low

37%

Grade 7 Math
Statewide Low

39%

Grade 8
Science

45%

Grade 10 ELA
Statewide High

ELA — % Meeting/Exceeding by Grade

The dip is in the middle: ELA bottoms out at 37% in Grade 4 and recovers to 45% by Grade 10, its strongest grade. No grade and subject in the state now has a majority meeting expectations.

Math — % Meeting/Exceeding by Grade

Math slides as school goes on: 42% of third graders meet expectations; by Grade 8 it is 42%. Every grade from 5 through 8 sits below where students started.

Science & Civics — Statewide

The subjects nobody reports on: Science across grades 5 and 8 sits at 41% and Civics at 40% — both below the ELA and math figures that lead every headline.

-12pts

ELA (Gr 3-8)
vs 2019

-8pts

Math (Gr 3-8)
vs 2019

-16pts

ELA (Gr 10)
vs 2019

-15pts

Math (Gr 10)
vs 2019

MCAS % Meeting/Exceeding Expectations (2019 vs 2025 vs 2026)

Five years post-pandemic, no recovery: Scores remain far below 2019 levels. Grade 10 math has gone from 59% to 44% — a 15-point fall.

Grade 10 Score Changes (2025→2026)

High School Chronic Absenteeism by Group

24.8%

Gateway Cities
ELA Average

24.2%

Gateway Cities
Math Average

45.5%

Rest of State
ELA Average

15pts

Achievement
Gap

Gateway Cities vs. Rest of State

Persistent inequality: Gateway Cities lag 21-23 percentage points behind the rest of Massachusetts in both ELA and Math.

Gateway City Performance (MCAS 2026)

The math floor: Of the Gateway cities above, Holyoke is lowest at 6% meeting math expectations, then Lynn at 14% and Lawrence at 17%. The statewide Gateway average is 24.2% against 47.1% in the rest of the state.

Gateway Cities — Year-over-Year Change (2025 to 2026, percentage points)

Sorted by ELA change, best first; both panels use that same order so a city sits on the same row in each. Blue is a gain, red a decline, grey unchanged.

ELA

Math

Mostly flat or falling: ELA rose in 3 of the 26 cities shown and fell in 17; math rose in 8 and fell in 6. Holyoke, the lowest here, was unchanged in both. Each bar is DESE's published 2026 rate minus its published 2025 rate. DESE publishes those rates as whole percentages, so a move smaller than half a point shows here as zero; recomputed from DESE's own student counts, three cells do — Chicopee, Malden and Worcester math, each under a point.

18.8%

All Students
Chronically Absent

29.5%

Hispanic
Students

10.9%

Asian
Students

-0.9pt

Change vs
2023-24

Chronic Absenteeism by Student Group, 2024-25

Nearly one student in five: 18.8% of Massachusetts students were chronically absent. Among low-income students it is 28.9% and among Hispanic students 29.5% — close to triple the 10.9% rate for Asian students.

Change from 2023-24 to 2024-25

Improving, slowly, everywhere: Every group improved, but the state moved only 0.9 points in a year. English learners improved most at 2.1 points; white students least at 0.5.

2025-26 Year to Date — Through March

Not comparable to the completed years above. Chronic absenteeism counts students who have missed 10% or more of the days they were enrolled. It is measured against days elapsed, so a figure taken in March covers roughly two-thirds of a school year and will not equal the same cohort's year-end rate. Read this as where the year stands, not as this year against last. DESE student attendance report, 2026 (March).

89.3%

Four-Year Rate
Class of 2025

71.1%

English
Learners

78.7%

Students with
Disabilities

+0.9pt

vs Class
of 2024

Four-Year Cohort Graduation Rate by Student Group — Class of 2025

A 24-point spread behind one number: The state graduates 89.3% of its students, but that runs from 95.8% for Asian students to 71.1% for English learners. The headline rate describes no group in particular.

Class of 2024 vs Class of 2025

Annual Dropout Rate by Student Group, 2024-25

English learners drop out at 6.5% — more than three times the statewide 1.8%, and sixteen times the 0.4% rate for Asian students.

$23,165

Total Per-Pupil
FY2024

+27%

Above Required
Minimum

40%

Students
Proficient ELA

No Gain

Achievement
Despite Spending

Per-Pupil Spending, FY2022–FY2024

DESE Per-Pupil Expenditure, in-district basis. FY2024 is the latest year DESE has published.

MCAS Proficiency, 2022–2026

Money isn't the answer: In-district per-pupil spending rose from $19,712 to $22,414 across FY2022–FY2024, a 13.7% increase. Over the same stretch ELA proficiency moved 39%→42% and math did not move at all.

Per-Pupil Expenditure, FY2024

$23,165 per student, all in: In-district spending is $22,414; adding out-of-district placements brings the statewide total to $23,165 per pupil.

Teacher Evaluation Ratings, 2024-25

96.3% rated Proficient or Exemplary in a system where 40% of students meet ELA expectations. 0.2% of Massachusetts teachers were rated Unsatisfactory.

11.6%

Asian
Chronic Absent

18.3%

White
Chronic Absent

38.3%

Hispanic/EL
Chronic Absent

27pts

Gap Between
Groups

Where Students Land — Grades 3-8 ELA Achievement Levels

7% of Massachusetts students exceed expectations in ELA. 39% are only partially meeting them and 21% are not meeting them at all — so 60% of the state sits below "Meeting", the same figure the headline proficiency numbers describe from the other direction.

Graduation Gap vs. Statewide Average

Every gap runs the same direction: English learners finish 18.2 points below the state average, students with disabilities 10.6 below, low-income students 6.4 below. Asian and white students sit above it.

Massachusetts K-12 Education Crisis