High Schools in New Bedford

New Bedford has two high schools in this data: New Bedford High, which serves grades 9–12 with about 2,878 students, and Whaling City Junior/Senior High School, which serves grades 6–12 with about 200 students. Both are part of the New Bedford district, which ranks 327 out of 351 Massachusetts districts — the 7th percentile, with 0 stars — so both schools sit inside a district that is already among the state's lowest-ranked.

New Bedford High is the larger and comparatively stronger of the two. Its 2025–2026 ranking is 319 out of 353 schools (10th percentile, 0 stars), and in 2024–2025 it ranked 315 out of 349 (10th percentile, 1 star). Its graduation rate is 84.8%, above the district's 79.9%, and its dropout rate is 11.4%, below the district's 13.7%. It also exceeds the district on every listed MCAS measure — for example, 10th-grade ELA proficiency of 18.57% versus the district's 16.5%, and 10th-grade mathematics at 14.63% versus 13.4%. Still, those figures are far below state averages (45.48% in ELA and 43.73% in mathematics), and year-over-year results are mixed: 10th-grade ELA fell from 24.73% to 18.57% and science from 16.48% to 11.65%, while mathematics edged up from 13.87% to 14.63%.

Whaling City Junior/Senior High School stands out for the opposite reason. It ranks 353 out of 353 (0th percentile, 0 stars), with a 50.6% graduation rate and a 29.9% dropout rate — more than double the district's. It reports 0% proficient in ELA all grades, mathematics all grades, 10th-grade ELA, 10th-grade mathematics, 8th-grade mathematics and Biology end-of-course, with its only non-zero science figures at 10% for Science all grades and 10% for 8th-grade Science. Notably, it spends $27,576 per student (2020–2021) versus $16,469 at New Bedford High and has a lower student-teacher ratio (11.4 versus 13.5). Its 200 students across grades 6–12 mean percentages can swing sharply, and free/reduced-lunch data is blank for both schools.