Summary:
Peabody has a single public high school: Peabody Veterans Memorial High, serving grades 9–12 with 1,333 students as part of the Peabody district. Because it is the only high school in town, families have no in-town alternative, so the meaningful comparisons are against the district and the state rather than against a local peer school.
Against its own district, the school looks strong — it beats district averages on every outcome in the data. Its 2024-25 graduation rate is 90.7% versus 83.7% district-wide, and its dropout rate is 4.1% versus 7.8%, roughly half the district's. Tenth-grade MCAS proficiency also edges the district in 2025-26: 28.19% in ELA, 24.42% in math, 25.97% in science, and 22.52% in biology. Against the state, though, the picture is different. Proficiency trails Massachusetts by roughly 15 to 19 points in every subject, and the school sits in the bottom quartile statewide — a 1-star rating and about the 24th percentile in each of the past three years. The statewide gap narrowed in 2025-26 mainly because state scores fell, not because the school surged; ELA did post a genuine gain of nearly three points.
Completion is the strongest part of the profile: about 9 in 10 students graduate and fewer than 1 in 20 drop out, even though roughly three-quarters do not reach proficiency on 10th-grade MCAS. Resources look reasonable — a 10.2-to-1 student-teacher ratio (roughly 131 teachers) and $18,139 per student in 2020-21, though that spending figure is five years old. Free/reduced lunch is not reported, which limits how well the achievement gaps can be explained.
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