MCAS, SY 2024-25
All grades, all students. % Meeting or Exceeding Expectations.English Language Arts
86.0%
State avg 43.8%
District avg 74.7%
County avg 55.9%
+0.0pp since 2018-19
Mathematics
85.0%
State avg 42.2%
District avg 76.1%
County avg 55.4%
-4.0pp since 2018-19
Science
73.0%
State avg 44.2%
District avg 72.0%
County avg 57.6%
What this means: On the MCAS, Massachusetts's statewide test, about 86 of every 100 students at this school read and write at grade level, about 85 of 100 do math at grade level, and about 73 of 100 are at grade level in science. Across all Massachusetts schools, those numbers are about 44, 42, and 44. Reading and writing scores have held steady since 2018, while math scores are down about 4 points.
What is MCAS?
MCAS (the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System) is the statewide test for Massachusetts public schools. Students in grades 3 through 8 take it in English Language Arts and Math, with Science added at grades 5 and 8. High school students take grade-10 MCAS in ELA and Math plus a high-school Science test (Biology or Physics) for graduation.
What does "% Meeting or Exceeding Expectations" mean?
It is the percentage of students at the school whose scores were rated "Meeting Expectations" or "Exceeding Expectations" on the test. Those are the top two of four MCAS performance levels (Not Meeting, Partially Meeting, Meeting, Exceeding) and they signal the student is performing at grade level or above. A higher number is better.
What does 86.0% mean for English Language Arts at Needham High?
It means about 86.0 percent of students tested at Needham High performed at grade level or above on the MCAS English Language Arts test in 2024-25. The statewide average for Massachusetts that year was 43.8%. The other students fell into the lower performance levels.
How is the state average calculated?
It is a weighted average, not a simple average of each school's number. We multiply each public school's score by how many of its students tested, add those together for all schools in Massachusetts, and divide by the total students tested that year. This way a big school with 1,500 students counts more than a small school with 50 students, which is the right way to ask "how did the typical student do this year?". District and county averages on this page use the same method, just scoped to that district or county.
Where does this data come from?
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS), via the Education to Career open data portal. School-level All Students subgroup. Headline metric is the cumulative "Meeting or Exceeding Expectations" rate (top two of four performance levels).
How often is it updated?
MCAS is administered once a year (spring). Results are released by the state in the summer or early fall. We refresh this page after each annual release.
