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The Boston Magazine high school rankings are in, and Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School has dropped from number 9 in 2023 to number 36 in 2024. The precipitous fall is dramatic at first glance, but a review of the underlying data used by Boston Magazine raises more questions than it answers.
Students at the school largely performed the same or better this year on standardized tests. The scores on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests improved in two out of three areas:
| Year | MCAS English % Proficient | MCAS Math % Proficient | MCAS Science % Proficient |
| 2023 | 81 | 78 | 73 |
| 2024 | 80 | 83 | 77 |
And the test results from the SAT and AP tests held steady or improved:
| Year | Avg SAT Reading/Writing | Avg SAT Math | AP % Proficient |
| 2023 | 625 | 641 | 92 |
| 2024 | 627 | 640 | 94.9 |
Top level metrics from the school didn’t change much, except a few areas of small gains. The enrollment level, class sizes and student-to-teacher ratios all held fairly steady year-over-year, while the graduation rate improved from 97 percent to 98.9 percent. The percent of students attending college dropped from 2023, from 84.1 to 81.9, but that 81.9 percent matched the top-ranked school in this year’s list: Dover-Sherborn Regional High School.
The most dramatic change from 2023 shows up in the educator evaluation data. In 2023, 38.6 percent of Lincoln-Sudbury educators received “exemplary” evaluations. In 2024, that number dropped to zero.
| Year | Educator Eval Proficient | Educator Eval Exemplary | Educator Eval Combined |
| 2023 | 60 | 38.6 | 98.6 |
| 2024 | 95.9 | 0 | 95.9 |
The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) establishes a framework for educator evaluations. However, inconsistencies between DESE data and local district data are not uncommon, including a recent discrepancy illustrating the issue in Concord. Sudbury Weekly contacted Lincoln-Sudbury for clarification on the teacher evaluation data, but had not received a response at the time of publishing this story.
In comparison to the top-ranked high schools, Lincoln-Sudbury’s metrics were quite similar across the board. But the top-ranked schools typically had slightly higher MCAS proficiency percentages in the mid-high 80’s, and a significantly higher number of educators evaluated to be “exemplary.” Outside of those points of contrast, Lincoln-Sudbury had more in common with the top 10 schools than it didn’t. Even the AP proficiency percentage at Lincoln-Sudbury matched top-ranked Dover Sherborn at 94.9 percent.
Dover Sherborn jumped from number 3 in 2023 to number 1 in 2024, and the main change in the school’s underlying metrics was also in the educator evaluations. The school increased from 38.2 percent of educators receiving an exemplary evaluation in 2023 to 64.3 percent in 2024. Their MCAS and other standardized test results held steady or improved modestly, quite similar to Lincoln-Sudbury’s gains year-over-year.
School rankings can vary dramatically depending methodologies and choices about weighting for various criteria. Boston Magazine is transparent about their methodology, which is available on the same page as the results here. Some critics of school rankings advise parents to evaluate the data along with other personalized criteria rather than defaulting to a ranked list. Yet other critics question the reliance on standardized tests to determine rankings.
Sudbury Weekly will update this story with any additional information we can find about the change in educator evaluations at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School.
