Back in September, we here at The Policy Minute shared with you the
2016 median household incomes of schools in the highest and lowest percentile rankings in the old (pre-2017) Massachusetts school and district Accountability system. Districts with the highest and lowest ranked schools continue to show wide disparities between their education spending and the foundation budget and the capacity of the the communities to increase education spending based on median household income.
Since our data were publish, the 2018 school and district rankings were published using the
NEW accountability system.
What has changed? Not much. Districts with schools in the 99th percentile have median family incomes that exceed $108,000 annually. Districts with schools in the bottom 1% of rankings still include Boston, Holyoke, Fall River, Lawrence and Springfield. All cities with median household incomes below $58,516. Oh, and Holyoke and Lawrence have been under the control of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education as
Chronically Underperforming Districts.
