Data-Driven Education Journalism for the Bay State
Education News & Data
Local education reporting from every corner of Massachusetts, grounded in Massachusetts Department of Education data.
Before the pandemic, boys in MA had higher chronic absenteeism. Since 2022, girls have led every year. In 2025, 58.7% of districts showed the same flip.
The Native American-white chronic absence gap in MA grew 4.2 points since pre-COVID, the widest expansion of any racial group. Recovery lags all but one.
Lawrence cut chronic absenteeism from 43.5% to 23.3%, 0.6 points below its pre-COVID rate. Among Massachusetts' nine largest Gateway Cities, it stands alone.
The Hispanic-white chronic absence gap in MA is 3.6 points wider than pre-COVID. In Boston and Framingham, over 40% of Hispanic students miss school.
The median chronic absenteeism rate in Massachusetts Gateway Cities is 26.9%, more than triple the 8.6% suburban median, a gap that widened 2.2 points since COVID.
Boston Public Schools cut chronic absenteeism from 42.2% to 33.0% since 2022, but still sits 7.8 points above pre-COVID levels. Hispanic students and students receiving special education face rates above 40%.
42 of 393 Massachusetts districts have brought chronic absenteeism back to pre-COVID levels. Voc-tech schools recovered at nearly triple the statewide rate.
After three years of improvement, Massachusetts chronic absenteeism recovery has nearly stopped. Annual gains shrank from 5.5 points to under 1, leaving 89% of districts above pre-COVID rates.
Massachusetts kindergarten enrollment has fallen below grade 12 for 12 straight years, a pipeline inversion that guarantees smaller schools for a generation.
One in four traditional districts recorded their lowest enrollment in 33 years of state data, with Western MA and Cape Cod hit hardest.
No Massachusetts district has declined longer without interruption than Ludlow, which has lost students every year since 2009 and shed 30.6%.
After tripling from 77,410 to 237,226 since 1994, Hispanic enrollment in Massachusetts fell by 1,298 in 2026. Gateway cities bore the losses.
Massachusetts LEP enrollment nearly tripled over 30 years to a peak of 127,673 in 2025. In 2026, it dropped 5.4%, the second-largest decline on record.
Massachusetts' 29 voc-tech districts grew 19.3% since 2008 while traditional districts lost 93,000 students and 8,100 seats go unfilled.
Framingham's white enrollment share fell 28.7 percentage points since 2015, the steepest decline of any mid-size Massachusetts district, as Hispanic students became the majority.
