18 MA School Districts Honored By Advanced Placement

Hundreds of school districts nationwide, including 18 in Massachusetts, have been named to the annual AP District Honor Roll, which recognizes schools that increase access to and performance on Advanced Placement programs. More than 370 school districts across the country and in Canada were recognized on the ninth annual list.

To qualify, large school districts had to show at least 4 percent more participation and access to Advanced Placement programs year over year. Medium districts had to see at least a 6 percent increase and small districts had to see at least 11 percent.

These schools increased access to Advanced Placement courses for minority students while also improving or maintaining the rate at which participating students scored a 3 or higher on an AP Exam.

Here are all the schools in Massachusetts:

• Belchertown: Belchertown Public School District ★
• Brookline: Brookline School District
• Turners Falls: Franklin County Technical School District ‡
• South Deerfield: Frontier Regional School District
• Lunenburg: Lunenburg School District ★
• Lynnfield: Lynnfield Public School District ★
• Marshfield: Marshfield School District
• Medford: Medford School District
• Mendon: Mendon Upton Regional School District ★
• Natick: Natick School District ★
• Newburyport: Newburyport Public School District ★
• Norwell: Norwell Public School District ★
• Mattapoisett: Old Rochester Regional School District ★
• Pembroke: Pembroke Public School District ★
• Shrewsbury: Shrewsbury Public Schools ★
• Kingston: Silver Lake Regional High School District ★
• South Hadley: South Hadley Public Schools ★
• Westborough: Westborough School District ★

Districts marked with a star achieved the AP honor over several years. An asterisk notes districts that saw at least 30 percent enrollment of American Indian, African-American and Hispanic/Latino students, and a dagger shows those where at least 30 percent of participants qualified for free or reduced lunch.

National data from this year showed that about half of underrepresented students with a “high degree of readiness for AP” participated in the program, the organization wrote on its website.

College Board sponsors the Advanced Placement program and the popular SAT test, which attempts to assess a students’ college-readiness. The Honor Roll recognition is based on three years of data from 2016 to 2018.

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

Photo credit: Charles Dharapak/Associated Press