New Bedford
Lawrence Erased Its COVID Attendance Crisis. No Other Large Gateway City Can Say That.
Correction (July 22, 2026): An earlier version said English-learner chronic absenteeism dropped from 23.7% to 23.9%; it rose by 0.2 point. It also called the 2024-25 Lawrence-state gap the lowest in t...
Gateway City Students Miss School at Triple the Rate of Suburban Peers
In Dover-Sherborn, a wealthy suburban district 20 miles southwest of Boston, 5.3% of students are chronically absent. In Boston itself, 33.0% are. Six times the rate. Same state, same funding formula,...
Massachusetts Attendance Recovery Stalls Below 1 Point
Three years ago, Massachusetts was making real progress on chronic absenteeism. The state cut 5.5 percentage points in a single year, the kind of improvement that made recovery feel inevitable. The ne...
Only 86 Kindergartners for Every 100 Seniors
In 1996, Massachusetts had 152 kindergartners for every 100 seniors. In 2025-26, it has 87.
One in Four Massachusetts Districts at All-Time Enrollment Lows
Correction (July 23, 2026): An earlier version described 900,490 students as the lowest total since 1994. Enrollment in 1995 was 895,886, below the 2025-26 figure, so the correct reference is the lowe...
One in 19 Massachusetts Students Now Attends a Charter School
The pandemic was supposed to be the great equalizer: every school in Massachusetts closed, every family improvised, every district lost students. It was not. Between 2019 and 2021, traditional public ...
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...