Where Does Reading Rank Among the State's Top School Districts?

By PATRICK LUCE (Patch Staff)

Just in time for the start of the school year, Boston Magazine has released its annual rankings of the top school districts in Massachusetts.

Reading narrowly missed cracking the upper half of the top 100 list, coming in at number 55.

Using the most recent data from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Statistician George Recck, director of the Math Resource Center at Babson College, created a weighted average value based on the best available date for the school districts — including high schools, middle schools and elementary schools. Recck then compared each district’s data values with the overall average for all districts. After applying a percentage weight to the standardized value for each, the districts ranked based on their statistical score.

Recck based the rankings on the following metrics: class size, enrollment, student-to-teacher ratio, per-pupil spending, graduation rate, percent of students attending college, average SAT scores, and MCAS scores for third graders.

The Dover-Sherborn School District scored the highest with a student-teacher ration of less than 12, more than $18,000 in annual per-pupil spending, and a graduation rate of 97.3 percent. Weston — with the highest graduation rate at 99.5 percent — Lexington, Wayland and Bedford round out the top 5.

The top 100 school districts in Massachusetts include:

1. Dover-Sherborn
2. Weston
3. Lexington
4. Wayland
5. Bedford
6. Concord-carlisle
7. Harvard
8. Wellesley
9. Westborough
10. Newton
11. Sharon
12. Medfield
13. Lincoln-Sudbury
14. Holliston
15. Winchester
16. Manchester Essex
17. Marblehead
18. Northboro-Southboro
19. Westford
20. Brookline
21. Westwood
22. Needham
23. Hamilton-Wenham
24. Masconomet
25. Acton-Boxborough
26. Andover
27. Newburyport
28. Hopkinton
29. Nashoba
30. Hingham
31. Cambridge
32. Norwell
33. Cohasset
34. Rockport
35. Foxborough
36. Lynnfield
37. Arlington
38. Duxbury
39. Burlington
40. Swampscott-Nahant
41. Stoneham
42. Mansfield
43. Scituate
44. Littleton
45. Belmont
46. Chelmsford
47. Ashland
48. North Reading
49. Berlin-Boylston
50. Natick
51. Franklin
52. Hanover
53. Braintree
54. Pentucket
55. Reading
56. Canton
57. Dedham
58. Walpole
59. Ipswitch
60. Milton
61. Wilmington
62. Georgetown
63. Medway
64. Easton
65. Watertown
66. Wakefield
67. King Philip
68. Millis
69. Triton
70. Framingham
71. Hull
72. Norwood
73. North Andover
74. Danvers
75. West Bridgewater
76. Amesbury
77. Marshfield
78. Melrose
79. Norton
80. Stoughton
81. Hudson
82. Silver Lake
83. Medford
84. Waltham
85. Maynard
86. Woburn
87. Tewksbury
88. Bellerica
89. Quincy
90. Beverly
91. Milford
92. Plymouth
93. Avon
94. Gloucester
95. Pembroke
96. Peabody
97. Carver
98. Marlborough
99. Winthrop
100. Bridgewater-Raynham