Best High Schools in Boston, MA

High schools in the city of Boston, Massachusetts include eight schools serving grades ranging from 6–12 to 11–12, seven of them in the Boston district and one, Edward M. Kennedy Academy for Health Careers: A Horace Mann, listed under its own Edward M. Kennedy Academy for Health Careers: A Horace Mann district. Total enrollment is 5,660 students, but the median school enrolls only 464; Boston Latin School alone accounts for 2,424 students, roughly 42.8% of the total. Available data cover school ranks for three years, 2024–2025 graduation and dropout rates, MCAS proficiency, per-student spending from 2020–2021, and student-teacher ratios. Free/reduced-lunch percentages are blank for all eight schools, and Boston Adult Technical Academy has no rank and no test scores.

Boston Latin School is the clear academic outlier: ranked 24 of 353 (93rd percentile, 5 stars), with a 99.0% graduation rate, 0.3% dropout rate, and the only 10th-grade results above state averages in ELA (76.32%), Math (84.85%), and Science (68.09%). Boston Arts Academy is the strongest non-Latin school, ranked 240 of 353 (32nd percentile, 2 stars) with a 93.9% graduation rate and 3.5% dropout rate, and it leads other non-Latin schools in 10th-grade ELA (34.45%), Math (30.25%), and Science (24.56%) — though its 2024–2025 10th-grade ELA was 61.60%, showing a large year-over-year swing.

The remaining schools generally fall below district and state averages. Quincy Upper School has a 1.5% dropout rate, 90.9% graduation rate, and 6th-grade Math of 47.11% (above the state 6th-grade average of 42.59%), but weak science. English High School has the highest spending ($31,713) yet single-digit proficiency. Snowden International High School reports 0% 10th-grade Science. Margarita Muniz Academy has the lowest student-teacher ratio (9.1) but the weakest math (1.94%). Edward M. Kennedy Academy for Health Careers: A Horace Mann posts 91.5% graduation and 6.1% dropout with low proficiency, while Boston Adult Technical Academy has the most severe persistence challenge at 67.0% graduation and 21.6% dropout.