Analyses
Grade 8 is where Lunenburg loses students
Of every Lunenburg eighth grade, 20.5% does not come back for grade 9 — the highest grade in all 17 years the state has measured. Where they go is not published: Monty Tech, which the town belongs to and pays for either way, a private school, and a family moving away are one number here.
lunenburgbudgetproject.org — written by the Lunenburg Budget Project, an independent tool for residents. Not affiliated with the Town of Lunenburg, the School Committee or the school district. The data this page is computed from: /data/attrition.json
What this report counts
A RATE, NEVER A COUNT. Of the children in one grade in one year, the share who were not enrolled in a Lunenburg school the following October. It cannot be summed across grades and cannot be averaged across them without weighting by the enrolment in each. It counts leaving for ANY reason and names no destination. Where a number of children appears on this page it is the rate multiplied by DESE’s own enrolment, and it says so.
20.5% of each eighth grade does not come back to a Lunenburg school for grade 9.
The highest grade in all 17 years measured. The other eleven sit between 3.0% and 6.4%.
Residents keep asking which grades children leave in. It is one grade, it is the same grade every year, and the step it sits at is the move from the middle school to the high school. Averaged over the whole file the grade 8 rate is 3.2 times the next highest grade, and it is the highest grade in every single year measured — through a school closing, a new building opening and a pandemic. Applied to the town’s own eighth grades that is about 27 children a year and roughly 452 in total. Those counts are IMPLIED — DESE publishes the rate and the enrolment, and this page multiplies them.
Where the town’s children are → · What Monty Tech costs the town →
What it rests on `dese_attrition`, Lunenburg’s district rows for All Students, joined to `dese_enrollment` on the PREVIOUS year’s grade counts — which is the join DESE’s own all-grades rate reproduces five times more closely than the same-year one, and which two other independent checks in the generator confirm.
What it does not show Why, and where to. Attrition is leaving for any reason: a vocational admission at grade 9, a private or charter school, a school choice transfer, an out-of-district placement and a family moving are one number here. Nothing in this file separates them, and the file that names destinations carries no grade.
The eighth grade measured this year lost 27.7% — the second-highest of seventeen years.
Averaged inside five eras the rate stays between 17.4% and 22.3%. A high year, not a new level.
The rate has risen for the last stretch of the series, which is what a reader will notice first. Set against seventeen years it is inside a range the town has been in the whole time. The series runs from 13.2% in SY2016 to 28.7% in SY2013 and the five eras — built from DESE’s own grade spans, so a school closing and a new building are boundaries rather than noise — average within 4.9 points of each other. The current run of rises is 3 years long and the longest earlier one was 3, so a run of this length is not new either. A single Lunenburg grade is around a hundred and twenty children, so one family is close to a point.
What it rests on The same district rows, averaged inside eras derived in code from `dese_enrollment` grade spans by the functions /what-courses-actually-ran uses, so the two pages cannot segment the same reorganisation differently. The pandemic boundary is OURS and is marked as ours wherever it appears.
What it does not show Whether the rise continues. Three points are three points, and this town’s boards are being asked to read them as a direction because they have nothing longer. The eras are on the page precisely so a reader can see what the same three points looked like the last four times.
DESE’s rates imply 1,538 children left in seventeen years. Enrolment fell 171.
Churn is 9.0 times the net change, so arrivals rather than leavers set the size of the schools.
The question a resident arrives with is whether children leaving is why the schools are emptying. On these two files it is not: the leaving is an order of magnitude larger than the change, and almost all of it is replaced. About 90 children a year leave, every year, and district enrolment went from 1,739 in FY2009 to 1,568 in FY2026. A town losing 10 children a year net and a town losing 90 and gaining most of them back are the same line on an enrolment chart and are not the same town. It is the same shape this project found on the other side of the ledger, where inbound school choice collapsed while outbound stayed flat and the net barely moved.
What it rests on DESE’s all-grades attrition rate for each year applied to the previous year’s Lunenburg enrolment in grades K to 11, against DESE’s own district totals at both ends. Grade 12 is excluded from the rate by DESE: a twelfth grader who does not come back has graduated.
What it does not show Who arrives. This page measures one direction only and the balancing figure is a RESIDUAL rather than a measurement — births, families moving in, children returning from a private school and anybody repeating a year are one number here. Nor is the implied total a count of distinct children.
Eighth graders on an IEP leave at 34.7%, against 20.5% for all students.
The gap is 14.3 points at grade 8 and never above 4.1 points at any other grade.
A group that leaves more everywhere is a different fact from one that leaves more at a single step. This is the second: across the other eleven grades the two series are close together. Published in all 17 years, and it swings from 19.0% to 54.5% between them — because the group inside one Lunenburg grade is on the order of twenty children, so one family is several points. That is the reason the year-by-year sits under this card rather than a headline off any single year. The same shape appears for High Needs and for Low Income, which OVERLAP this group and each other and are never added.
The route out of district → · How many children are on an IEP →
What it rests on `dese_attrition` district rows for Students with Disabilities against All Students, grade by grade, over the same years. The cohort sizes beside them are ESTIMATES: DESE publishes no count of a student group within a grade, so they are the district’s own published share of that group applied to the grade’s enrolment.
What it does not show Anything about placement, service or cause. An out-of-district placement made at the high school transition, a vocational admission, a family moving for services and a private school all fit this number equally well. A special education placement is not attrition and this file cannot tell you which of these it counted.
No published record says which school a departing Lunenburg eighth grader went to.
Monty Tech, a private school, a charter and a family moving are one number here.
This is the question every reader of the card above will ask next, and it is the one the record refuses. Two DESE files each hold half of the answer and neither holds the join. 177 Lunenburg children were educated somewhere other than a Lunenburg school in FY2026. Monty Tech holds 97 of them across four grade years, about 24.2 a year, which is the same order of magnitude as the 27 eighth graders a year this page implies are leaving — and being the same size is not being the same children. Lunenburg is a MEMBER town of Monty Tech, so a child going there is not choosing out of the town’s system in the way the phrase usually means. The district files the submission that produces this rate every 1 October, so the grade breakdown exists inside the district before the state publishes anything.
What Monty Tech costs the town → · The gap this leaves →
What it rests on `dese_town_enrollment`, read whole: its columns are checked on every run and the generator refuses to publish this claim if a grade column ever appears in it.
What it does not show Any attribution at all. Nothing here says a single departing eighth grader went to any of these places. The sizes are comparable and that is the whole of what is established.
Those are the answers this report could reach from the documents behind it. If the one you came for is not among them, ask us — no name or email needed.
Did the budget cuts do this?
Nothing here can say, and the shape of the series argues against it. Grade 8 was already losing 20.0% of each cohort in SY2010–SY2012, years before any of the reductions the town is currently arguing about, and the five eras since sit between 17.4% and 22.3%.
The most recent era, SY2023–SY2026, is the highest of the five at 22.3% — and it is +4.9 points above the lowest, which is inside the range this town has been in for 17 years. A rate that was this high before the cuts cannot be evidence that the cuts caused it, and a rate that is at its second-highest now is not evidence that they did not. This file records one outcome and no causes.
Every grade, averaged over 17 years
One bar is about 3.2 times the rest of the chart. Grade 8 averages 20.5%; the other eleven grades sit between 3.0% and 6.4%, and on a shared axis they flatten into a rule. The flattening is the finding, and the table under it carries the eleven numbers the bars cannot show.
Lunenburg district, All Students, SY2010 to SY2026 — 17 years. There is no grade 12 column: a twelfth grader who does not come back has graduated, and DESE does not call that attrition.
the mean, the median and the range, per grade
| grade | mean | median | lowest year | highest year | years it was the worst grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| K | 6.2% | 6.5% | 0.9% (SY2024) | 16.3% (SY2021) | 0 |
| 1 | 5.3% | 5.2% | 1.7% (SY2014) | 11.0% (SY2021) | 0 |
| 2 | 5.0% | 4.5% | 1.6% (SY2015) | 10.7% (SY2016) | 0 |
| 3 | 4.3% | 4.0% | 1.0% (SY2012) | 8.4% (SY2021) | 0 |
| 4 | 3.8% | 3.7% | 0.9% (SY2013) | 7.9% (SY2021) | 0 |
| 5 | 3.0% | 3.4% | 0.9% (SY2014) | 4.8% (SY2013) | 0 |
| 6 | 6.4% | 6.0% | 3.5% (SY2015) | 11.5% (SY2020) | 0 |
| 7 | 4.2% | 4.5% | 0.7% (SY2018) | 7.5% (SY2010) | 0 |
| 8 | 20.5% | 19.7% | 13.2% (SY2016) | 28.7% (SY2013) | 17 |
| 9 | 4.9% | 4.8% | 0.0% (SY2021) | 8.3% (SY2022) | 0 |
| 10 | 5.6% | 5.3% | 1.0% (SY2024) | 9.7% (SY2013) | 0 |
| 11 | 4.3% | 4.0% | 0.9% (SY2026) | 7.9% (SY2010) | 0 |
The last column is counted, not asserted. If the file ever stops having one grade that is worst in every year, the generator stops publishing one and nothing on this page is highlighted.
Grade 8, year by year
The rate runs from 13.2% in SY2016 to 28.7% in SY2013, and the most recent year is the second-highest of 17. The bands behind it are the five eras — built from DESE’s own enrolment-by-grade counts, so a school closing and a new building opening are boundaries rather than noise. Averaged inside them the rate stays between 17.4% and 22.3%, a spread of +4.9 points.
17 school years, SY2010 to SY2026. The dashed rule is the 17-year mean. The shaded pandemic band is an assertion of ours and is drawn in a different ink from the era boundaries, which are read off the state’s grade counts.
the eras, and the rate inside each
| era | high school grades | years | grade 8 | all grades |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SY2010–SY2012 | 9–12 | 3 | 20.0% | 6.4% |
| SY2013–SY2016 | 8–12 | 4 | 21.4% | 6.3% |
| SY2017–SY2019 | 9–12 | 3 | 17.4% | 5.4% |
| SY2020–SY2022 · the pandemic | 9–12 | 3 | 20.3% | 7.2% |
| SY2023–SY2026 | 9–12 | 4 | 22.3% | 5.9% |
What this does not show
Who leaves, at the grade that moves
The same grade, split by student group. Every group here OVERLAPS every other one and overlaps All Students — the same child can be in four of these bars — so nothing is added and no total is drawn. The dashed rule is All Students, which is what each bar is being compared with.
Lunenburg district, grade 8, SY2010 to SY2026 where published. Two of these bars cover part of the span only: DESE says so itself — “Economically Disadvantaged was used 2015-2021. Low Income was used prior to 2015, and a different version of Low Income has been used since 2022.” — and they are drawn in the recessive ink for that reason rather than joined into one line.
each group at grade 8, and against all students
| group | mean | published years | lowest | highest | against all students |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All Students | 20.5% | 17 | 13.2% | 28.7% | 0.0 points |
| Students with Disabilities | 34.7% | 17 | 19.0% | 54.5% | +14.3 points |
| High Needs | 30.0% | 17 | 14.3% | 40.7% | +9.5 points |
| Low Income | 31.4% | 10 | 19.5% | 57.1% | +11.0 points |
| Economically Disadvantaged | 24.8% | 7 | 11.5% | 33.3% | +4.4 points |
| English Learners | suppressed | 0 | — | — | — |
| Male | 22.8% | 17 | 13.1% | 37.5% | +2.3 points |
| Female | 18.0% | 17 | 11.8% | 28.6% | -2.5 points |
English Learners has no published grade 8 rate in any year. DESE suppresses a cell whose enrolment is under six, and this one always is.
The gap is at one step, not everywhere
A group that leaves more in every grade is a different fact from one that leaves more at a single step, and this is the second. Children on an IEP leave at 34.7% at grade 8 against 20.5% for all students — +14.3 points — and at no other grade is the difference more than +4.1 points.
students with disabilities against all students, grade by grade
| grade | on an IEP | all students | difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| K | 5.9% | 6.2% | -0.2 points |
| 1 | 6.7% | 5.3% | +1.4 points |
| 2 | 6.9% | 5.0% | +1.9 points |
| 3 | 4.6% | 4.3% | +0.3 points |
| 4 | 4.1% | 3.8% | +0.3 points |
| 5 | 4.6% | 3.0% | +1.5 points |
| 6 | 8.3% | 6.4% | +1.9 points |
| 7 | 8.1% | 4.2% | +3.9 points |
| 8 | 34.7% | 20.5% | +14.3 points |
| 9 | 9.0% | 4.9% | +4.1 points |
| 10 | 8.6% | 5.6% | +3.0 points |
| 11 | 7.4% | 4.3% | +3.1 points |
What this does not show
Does this explain the enrolment fall?
No, and it is not close. Applying DESE’s own all-grades rate to DESE’s own enrolment implies about 90 children leave every year, 1,538 over 17 transitions — while district enrolment went from 1,739 in FY2009 to 1,568 in FY2026. The churn is 9.0 times the net change. A town losing children and a town losing them and gaining most of them back are the same line on an enrolment chart and are not the same town.
17 year-to-year transitions. The bars are an annual FLOW and the line is a STOCK, on two axes that are deliberately not comparable: drawing them on one scale is what makes the flow invisible, which is the reading this section exists to correct.
the rate, the cohort it applies to, and the children it implies
| school year | cohort counted | children in K–11 | all-grades rate | children who left, implied |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SY2010 | FY2009 | 1,524 | 6.5% | 99.1 |
| SY2011 | FY2010 | 1,526 | 6.7% | 102.2 |
| SY2012 | FY2011 | 1,474 | 5.9% | 87.0 |
| SY2013 | FY2012 | 1,463 | 7.4% | 108.3 |
| SY2014 | FY2013 | 1,409 | 6.3% | 88.8 |
| SY2015 | FY2014 | 1,409 | 6.0% | 84.5 |
| SY2016 | FY2015 | 1,405 | 5.4% | 75.9 |
| SY2017 | FY2016 | 1,430 | 5.8% | 82.9 |
| SY2018 | FY2017 | 1,465 | 4.5% | 65.9 |
| SY2019 | FY2018 | 1,493 | 6.0% | 89.6 |
| SY2020 | FY2019 | 1,490 | 7.0% | 104.3 |
| SY2021 | FY2020 | 1,496 | 7.8% | 116.7 |
| SY2022 | FY2021 | 1,442 | 6.9% | 99.5 |
| SY2023 | FY2022 | 1,436 | 6.1% | 87.6 |
| SY2024 | FY2023 | 1,416 | 5.0% | 70.8 |
| SY2025 | FY2024 | 1,421 | 6.2% | 88.1 |
| SY2026 | FY2025 | 1,406 | 6.2% | 87.2 |
What this does not show
The other half, at the same step
Of every eighth grade, about 27 children do not come back. And in 16 of 17 years the following autumn’s grade 9 was still LARGER than the eighth graders who stayed — by about 11.7 on average. That residual is arithmetic across two files, not a measurement: arrivals from anywhere and anybody repeating the year are the same number in it.
grade 8 to grade 9, cohort by cohort
| eighth grade of | children | left | stayed | grade 9 that autumn | difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2009 | 134 | 20.0% | 107.2 | 144 | 36.8 |
| FY2010 | 135 | 20.7% | 107.1 | 124 | 16.9 |
| FY2011 | 128 | 19.4% | 103.2 | 114 | 10.8 |
| FY2012 | 124 | 28.7% | 88.4 | 105 | 16.6 |
| FY2013 | 122 | 20.5% | 97.0 | 106 | 9.0 |
| FY2014 | 144 | 23.4% | 110.3 | 108 | -2.3 |
| FY2015 | 127 | 13.2% | 110.2 | 117 | 6.8 |
| FY2016 | 115 | 19.1% | 93.0 | 112 | 19.0 |
| FY2017 | 123 | 15.3% | 104.2 | 124 | 19.8 |
| FY2018 | 147 | 17.7% | 121.0 | 126 | 5.0 |
| FY2019 | 126 | 23.0% | 97.0 | 107 | 10.0 |
| FY2020 | 141 | 18.2% | 115.3 | 122 | 6.7 |
| FY2021 | 120 | 19.7% | 96.4 | 107 | 10.6 |
| FY2022 | 142 | 19.1% | 114.9 | 125 | 10.1 |
| FY2023 | 129 | 18.6% | 105.0 | 119 | 14.0 |
| FY2024 | 132 | 23.8% | 100.6 | 109 | 8.4 |
| FY2025 | 122 | 27.7% | 88.2 | 89 | 0.8 |
Where they went, which nobody publishes
This is the next question every reader has, and the record refuses it. DESE publishes an attrition rate with no destination, and publishes where every resident child is educated with no grade. In FY2026, 177 Lunenburg children were educated somewhere other than a Lunenburg school — and not one of them can be attached to the grade they left in.
where lunenburg's resident children were educated, FY2026
| receiving district | why they are there | children |
|---|---|---|
| Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical | Resident/Member | 97 |
| Leominster | School Choice Program | 18 |
| Francis W. Parker Charter Essential (District) | Charter School | 15 |
| Fitchburg | School Choice Program | 8 |
| Greater Commonwealth Virtual District | School Choice Program | 8 |
| TEC Connections Academy Commonwealth Virtual School District | School Choice Program | 8 |
| Sizer School: A North Central Charter Essential (District) | Charter School | 7 |
| Nashoba | School Choice Program | 4 |
| Harvard | School Choice Program | 3 |
| Gardner | School Choice Program | 2 |
| Ayer Shirley School District | School Choice Program | 2 |
| Littleton | School Choice Program | 1 |
| Berlin-Boylston | School Choice Program | 1 |
| Groton-Dunstable | School Choice Program | 1 |
| North Middlesex | School Choice Program | 1 |
| Ralph C Mahar | School Choice Program | 1 |
“Resident/Member” against Monty Tech is not a child leaving the town’s system: Lunenburg is a member town of that district and is assessed for them either way. Every row here is a headcount at a point in time, across all grades. The file has no grade column, which is the whole of why this section exists.
A possible explanation — nothing here tests it
Monty Tech admits at grade 9. It holds 97 Lunenburg children across 4 grade years, about 24.2 a year — which is the same order of magnitude as the 27 eighth graders a year this page implies are leaving.
Being the same size is not being the same children, and this page does not say it is. The same rate is equally consistent with private and parochial admission at grade 9, with charter admission, with a school choice transfer, with an out-of-district special education placement made at the transition, and with families moving out of town. And Lunenburg is a MEMBER town of Monty Tech: a child going there is not choosing out of the town’s system in the way that phrase usually means, and the town is assessed for them either way.
What would settle it: One column. DESE’s residents-sending file with a grade on each row, or the district’s own October submission broken out by exit grade and exit reason — which the district files to the state every year and does not report to its own School Committee.
What the year on a row means
A row labelled SY2026 measures children who were enrolled in SY2025 and were not enrolled in SY2026. DESE says so: “This dataset provides the percentage of attrition by grade from the end of one school year to the beginning of the next for students in Massachusetts public schools since 2010. The information is as of October 1 of the given school year.” Get it backwards and every grade on this page shifts by one — the finding would land in grade 7 — and every figure would still be internally consistent. So the generator establishes it three ways that do not depend on each other, and refuses to write if any of them stops holding.
three independent routes to the same answer
| route | what it compares | result |
|---|---|---|
| DESE's own all-grades rate | the twelve grade rates weighted by enrolment, against grd_all | 0.8 in a thousand worst case on the previous year, against 3.8 on the same year — 4.5 times closer |
| grade 8 at Lunenburg High | the years the enrolment file says the school held it, against the years the attrition file reports it | 4 years, every one displaced by exactly 1 |
| DESE’s own group definitions | the years DESE says each low-income definition was used, against the rows carrying it | Economically Disadvantaged lands on SY2016–SY2022, which is DESE’s stated span moved by one |
The second and third routes touch nothing the first one touches. Two files that must agree is worth more than one file read carefully.
Why there is no school-level version of this
DESE blanks a grade where the school has “no grade in the given year for students from the previous year to advance”. A school’s top grade is exactly that — everybody in it advances out of the building — so Lunenburg Middle School, which ends at grade 8, publishes no grade 8 rate at all. The largest departure in this town is structurally invisible in every school row, and the district row is the only place it exists. The rule was checked on 62 school-years here, against the state’s own grade counts.
And a school-level series is not safe to read even where it exists. Lunenburg High has its own published rate for every year, and it is 8.8% in the 4 years the building held grade 8 against 5.1% in the other 13. That is +3.6 points, and not one child’s behaviour changed: the school was given an extra grade, and it happened to be the grade that leaves.
Lunenburg High, all grades in the building, SY2010 to SY2026. This chart is here to be misread and then corrected: it looks like a school that got worse and recovered, and it is a building programme.
What people said about this, in the town’s own words
Searching this archive for the words a report would use finds nothing about children at all. “Attrition” in Lunenburg means STAFF attrition, and “declining enrollment”, “enrollment decline”, “families leaving” and “losing students” return no documents between them. The town argues about this in different words.
the Lunenburg Middle High School Principal, to the School Committee
“She said to me that she was looking at choicing out if her private school choices didn't come through.”
School Committee · minutes · 2025-03-12 · our copy · the town’s
The decision this whole page measures, described by the person who watches it happen, in the town’s own words rather than ours. It also names two of the destinations at once -- a private school and a school choice transfer -- which is the reason no rate here can be read as one thing. What it establishes is that the choice is discussed in public. It establishes nothing about how many children make it.
the same principal, in the same comment
“I think that's going to be the reality that we have if we're not able to offer our student choices they are going to hemorrhage out of the high school”
School Committee · minutes · 2025-03-12 · our copy · the town’s
A prediction, made in public, about the quantity on this page. It is evidence of what somebody in the district expected; it is not evidence about what happened, and the series that would test it does not yet reach the years after it was said.
a student representative, to the School Committee
“When transitioning from 8th grade to 9th grade the numbers are reduced in the high school band.”
School Committee · minutes · 2024-02-07 · our copy · the town’s
The town does talk about the grade 8 to grade 9 step -- just about a different quantity. This is a student naming the transition where this page finds every year’s largest departure, and she attributes the drop she is describing to scheduling rather than to anybody leaving.
the School Committee’s own minutes
“b. Sizer & Parker Annual Reports Haven’t received the updated data”
School Committee · minutes · 2024-12-04 · our copy · the town’s
Rule 8, and the credit that goes with it: the committee had put the two charter schools’ annual reports on its own agenda and said in public that the data had not arrived. The board is asking the question this page cannot answer, and was told the same thing this page reports.
What this does not show
Searched 8,899 of the 12,015 meeting documents this archive holds (74%), covering 2009-01-05 to 2026-11-17. The other 3,116 carry no text a search can match — 3,096 of them are image scans awaiting OCR. An empty result above is a statement about what can be read, never about what was said.
Every grade, every year
The whole district series, as DESE publishes it. Each figure is the share of that grade’s children, counted the previous October, who were not in a Lunenburg school the following one.
lunenburg district, all students
| school year | cohort counted | K | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | all grades |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SY2010 | FY2009 | 2.7% | 5.9% | 6.7% | 2.2% | 1.6% | 3.1% | 6.2% | 7.5% | 20.0% | 4.4% | 9.1% | 7.9% | 6.5% |
| SY2011 | FY2010 | 6.2% | 5.1% | 4.1% | 3.3% | 4.4% | 4.7% | 9.5% | 4.7% | 20.7% | 4.9% | 6.5% | 3.8% | 6.7% |
| SY2012 | FY2011 | 8.0% | 1.7% | 2.7% | 1.0% | 3.3% | 1.5% | 7.7% | 5.6% | 19.4% | 3.9% | 7.7% | 6.6% | 5.9% |
| SY2013 | FY2012 | 5.0% | 7.3% | 4.0% | 5.8% | 0.9% | 4.8% | 4.9% | 4.9% | 28.7% | 6.0% | 9.7% | 6.7% | 7.4% |
| SY2014 | FY2013 | 7.6% | 1.7% | 5.6% | 4.0% | 2.5% | 0.9% | 9.7% | 6.3% | 20.5% | 5.7% | 5.3% | 5.4% | 6.3% |
| SY2015 | FY2014 | 8.1% | 7.0% | 1.6% | 1.9% | 1.5% | 4.2% | 3.5% | 1.7% | 23.4% | 6.4% | 5.8% | 3.6% | 6.0% |
| SY2016 | FY2015 | 7.0% | 4.0% | 10.7% | 3.9% | 4.3% | 2.2% | 4.2% | 5.4% | 13.2% | 4.7% | 3.7% | 1.1% | 5.4% |
| SY2017 | FY2016 | 6.7% | 5.2% | 3.8% | 6.6% | 5.1% | 3.4% | 3.6% | 4.1% | 19.1% | 4.3% | 4.8% | 3.8% | 5.8% |
| SY2018 | FY2017 | 1.7% | 3.4% | 5.0% | 3.8% | 4.0% | 1.4% | 5.6% | 0.7% | 15.3% | 4.5% | 3.5% | 5.9% | 4.5% |
| SY2019 | FY2018 | 6.5% | 5.8% | 4.9% | 5.3% | 3.1% | 2.4% | 7.3% | 3.1% | 17.7% | 4.0% | 4.8% | 4.4% | 6.0% |
| SY2020 | FY2019 | 5.6% | 7.0% | 3.3% | 5.8% | 5.2% | 3.0% | 11.5% | 4.2% | 23.0% | 4.9% | 6.6% | 4.0% | 7.0% |
| SY2021 | FY2020 | 16.3% | 11.0% | 8.4% | 8.4% | 7.9% | 3.4% | 4.3% | 6.3% | 18.2% | 0.0% | 3.3% | 3.4% | 7.8% |
| SY2022 | FY2021 | 6.7% | 4.8% | 6.9% | 5.5% | 2.7% | 4.0% | 8.7% | 2.2% | 19.7% | 8.3% | 7.3% | 5.7% | 6.9% |
| SY2023 | FY2022 | 6.5% | 5.5% | 1.9% | 1.5% | 4.5% | 3.5% | 6.0% | 3.2% | 19.1% | 4.8% | 8.9% | 4.9% | 6.1% |
| SY2024 | FY2023 | 0.9% | 3.3% | 4.5% | 6.3% | 3.5% | 3.8% | 4.2% | 4.6% | 18.6% | 4.2% | 1.0% | 3.7% | 5.0% |
| SY2025 | FY2024 | 4.7% | 7.6% | 4.1% | 5.4% | 3.7% | 3.5% | 4.6% | 2.4% | 23.8% | 6.8% | 4.2% | 2.0% | 6.2% |
| SY2026 | FY2025 | 4.3% | 3.8% | 7.0% | 1.6% | 5.5% | 1.7% | 7.8% | 4.5% | 27.7% | 5.5% | 2.7% | 0.9% | 6.2% |
1061 rows are in the table behind this page — 237 district and 824 school, across 15 student groups that overlap one another. Nothing on this page adds across either split.
One thing that could be done differently next year
Report the grade 8 exit count to the School Committee each autumn, beside the October enrolment. The district files the submission that produces this rate to the state every 1 October, so the number exists inside the district before DESE publishes it — and it is the one figure that would let a board tell a year when 13.2% of an eighth grade left from a year when a third did, while there is still a budget cycle to do anything about it.
What this page does not establish
- WHY anybody left. Attrition is leaving for any reason. A vocational admission, a private school, a charter, a school choice transfer, an out-of-district placement and a family moving for work are one number in this file, and nothing in it separates them.
- Where they went. DESE’s own file of where the town’s resident children are educated carries a receiving district and a reason and NO GRADE, so the 177 children educated somewhere else in FY2026 cannot be attributed to the grade they left in. Monty Tech holds 97 of them across 4 grade years — about 24.2 a year, which is the same order of magnitude as this page’s implied grade 8 departures and is not evidence that they are the same children.
- Anything about a school, at the grade that matters. DESE blanks the top grade of every school, because everybody in it advances out of the building — so Lunenburg Middle School, which ends at grade 8, publishes no grade 8 rate at all. The rule was checked on 62 school-years here. Every finding about grade 8 on this page is a DISTRICT figure, and there is no school-level version of it to be had.
- Lunenburg High’s own rate over time. It averages 8.8% in the 4 years the school held grade 8 and 5.1% in the other 13, a difference of 3.6 points that is a building programme rather than a change in anybody’s behaviour. It is on this page only to make that visible.
- A trend in the selected populations. English Learners have a published all-grades rate in 16 of 17 years and no published grade 8 rate in any year, because DESE suppresses a cell whose enrolment is under six. A group of a dozen children moves several points when one family does, and nothing on this page divides a group rate by anything.
- A count of children who left. Every number of children on this page is DESE’s rate multiplied by DESE’s enrolment, and it is an implied figure rather than a headcount anybody published. It is also not a count of distinct children: a child who leaves and comes back is two events here.
- Whether the town side has anything like this. Massachusetts collects an attrition rate from school districts and from nothing else, so no comparison between the two halves of the town budget can be drawn from this page in either direction.
- Anything about a person. Every figure here is a rate over a grade cohort. Where a quote names somebody it is a role in a public meeting record, quoted for what it describes.
What would close these
DESE already publishes where every Lunenburg resident child is educated — 177 of them somewhere other than a Lunenburg school in FY2026 — and publishes an attrition rate per grade. The two files never meet: one has no grade and the other has no destination. One column added to the first would say which grade each of those children left in, and would turn the largest measurement on this page from a rate into an answer. Every limit on this page is also a row in what we cannot answer, which is the single registry the records request reads from.
Which school a Lunenburg student who left went to, by grade
DESE publishes two files that each hold half of this and never the join. `dese_attrition` gives an attrition rate for every grade, every year, and names no destination. `dese_residents_sending` names every receiving district and the reason -- Monty Tech, school choice, charter, foster care -- and carries no grade at all. So the single largest measured departure in this town, about one in five of every eighth grade, cannot be attributed to anywhere: a vocational admission, a private school, a charter, a school choice transfer, an out-of-district placement and a family moving out of town are one number.
What would close it one column. DESE's residents-sending file with a grade on each row, or the district's own October SIMS submission broken out by exit grade and exit reason, which the district files to the state every 1 October and does not report to its own School Committee.
Why one in five Lunenburg eighth graders does not return for grade 9
The rate is measured and stable across seventeen years, two building reorganisations and a pandemic. The reason is not measured anywhere. Monty Tech admits at grade 9 and Lunenburg is a member town there, so a child going there moves part of the town's bill rather than adding to it -- but nothing published links the two quantities, and the same rate is equally consistent with private and parochial admission at grade 9, with charter admission, with an out-of-district special education placement made at the transition, and with families moving.
What would close it nothing anybody currently publishes. The nearest thing is an exit survey or an exit-reason tally kept by the district at the point a student is withdrawn, which is a record the district could choose to keep and report and does not.
How many of the children counted as leaving a Lunenburg school moved out of town
Attrition is leaving for ANY reason, so a family that moves to another state and a family that keeps its address and enrolls a child elsewhere are the same number. Without the split, the rate cannot be read as a statement about the schools at all -- and it is the reading every resident supplies. The town's own records could bound it: residency is what the district verifies at enrollment and what the assessor's and clerk's records track.
What would close it the district's withdrawal records coded by reason (moved out of district / transferred within Massachusetts / private / home school), which is a field SIMS already requires the district to report on every exit.
Where these figures come from
dese-student-attrition.xlsx
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
Every Massachusetts district and school, the share of students in each grade who did not return the following year, SY2010-SY2026, split by student group. Every figure in it is a PERCENTAGE. The source of every rate on this page. Stage: measured from the end of one school year to the beginning of the next, as at 1 October of the year named on the row. So the row says the year the children were GONE, not the year they were counted.
table dese_attrition · 23.5 MB
sha256 1323ea14ebb42d6f…
dese-enrollment-by-grade.xlsx
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
Enrolment by grade, by school, for every district. Two jobs here: it is the denominator that turns a rate into a number of children, and it is what establishes the grade span of each Lunenburg school in each year -- which is how this page knows a school-level series crosses a reorganisation. Stage: reported as at 1 October of the school year.
table dese_enrollment · 13.4 MB
sha256 a2fb23dea70ce67d…
dese-residents-sending.xlsx
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
Where the town’s resident children are educated, by receiving district and by reason -- Monty Tech, school choice, charter. It has NO GRADE in it, which is precisely why it cannot say where a departing eighth grader went. Stage: a headcount as at 1 October, by receiving district.
table dese_town_enrollment · 2.5 MB
sha256 ef345000874dab5a…
Computed by scripts/build_attrition.py and published at /data/attrition.json. Every figure on this page is recomputed from the CSVs by a second route in scripts/verify_attrition.py.
Every other report
Every analysis this project has written, in one index, is at reports.