Charter Schools

Massachusetts Charter Schools were established by the Education Reform Act of 1993. These schools are granted a charter by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. The charters are for a five year period.

Charter schools have the freedom of hiring, curriculum, teaching methods, and budgets among other facets of the school.

For those communities that are seeking information and guidance about charter schools in Massachusetts, the State Library has a collection of the applications, prospectuses and annual reports of the charter schoools.

Bette Siegel
Government Documents Librarian

High School Dropouts

The Massachusetts Department of Education's 2007-2008 annual dropout report provides education leaders with data to develop and strengthen prevention programs. Entitled High School Dropouts 2007-08, Massachusetts Public Schools, rates are taken from one year of statistics for grades nine through twelve. These are broken down by race/ethnicity and gender, school type, special populations, and summer/school year. Trends over time and final enrollment status of those in the latest count are presented. The appendices track annual dropout rate by district and school beginning in 2000 and by grade, gender, and race/ethnicity for individual school districts in 2007-2008.