Pittsfield
More Than One in Four Special Education Students Is Chronically Absent
Correction (July 21, 2026): An earlier version projected the current 3.1-day average-absence gap across a 13-year school career and described subgroup overlap and possible causes that the Massachusett...
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...
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...
Ludlow's 18-Year Losing Streak Is the Longest in Massachusetts
Eighteen years. That is how long it has been since Ludlow Public Schools recorded a single year of enrollment growth. The western Massachusetts district enrolled 3,111 students in 2007-08, the last ye...
White Students at 50.8%, One Year from Minority
In 1994, four out of five students in Massachusetts public schools were white. In 2026, the number is barely half. White enrollment stands at 50.8% of the state's 900,490 students, a margin so thin th...
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...