Fall River
One in Five Massachusetts Students Now Receives Special Education
For six years, from 2009 to 2015, Massachusetts held its special education rate nearly flat. The share of students receiving services hovered between 17.2% and 17.3%, barely moving from year to year. ...
Black Enrollment Hits All-Time High as Diaspora Reshapes Gateway Cities
Massachusetts public schools enrolled 93,651 Black students in 2025-26, the highest number in the 33 years the state has tracked enrollment by race. The record came in a year when total enrollment fel...
Boston Hits All-Time Low, Down 30% in Three Decades
In 2025, Boston Public Schools gained 352 students. It was the district's first year of growth since 2015, a small green bar in a decade of red. Superintendent Mary Skipper had reason to believe the w...
Four Years of Recovery, Gone in One
Massachusetts spent four years clawing back from the pandemic. The state added 4,467 students between 2021 and 2025, a recovery so slow it barely registered against a loss of 37,363. Then 2025-26 arri...