Summary
Watertown High is a public 9–12 school in Watertown, MA, a Boston-area community, serving 761 students. In 2025–2026 it ranked 135th of 353 Massachusetts high schools (62nd percentile, 3 stars); the Watertown district ranked 110th of 351. That places it in the upper-middle tier statewide but mid-pack locally: it trails Belmont High (99th percentile, 5 stars), Arlington High (95th), Newton North High (94th), Newton South High (93rd) and Cambridge Rindge and Latin (78th), and outranks Waltham Senior High (37th) and Brighton High School (3rd).
Test scores are mostly above state averages. In 2025–2026, 10th-grade ELA was 52.47% proficient (state: 45.48), math 47.13 (state: 43.73) and physics 49.07 (state: 46.58). Tenth-grade science, however, was below the state at 37.84 versus 40.50, and biology End of Course was a striking outlier at 6.67% versus 37.68% statewide — a district-wide pattern rather than a school-only one. Math, long a relative strength, slipped from 58.54 in 2024–2025 to 47.13, and science fell from 47.40 to 37.84.
Graduation and dropout separate Watertown from its highest-performing neighbors. In 2024–2025 its graduation rate was 89.7% with a 7.9% dropout rate, versus 97.5% and 0.0% at Belmont High, 98.2% and 0.5% at Arlington High, 98.7% and 0.9% at Newton South High, and 94.2% and 1.9% at Cambridge Rindge and Latin — though far better than Waltham Senior High (79.3% and 15.5%). Subgroup results vary widely: English Language Learner students rank in the 83rd percentile with 4 stars and special education students improved to the 60th percentile, while low-SES students sit at the 38th percentile. The school's student-teacher ratio (11) is lower than Belmont's and Arlington's, and 2020–2021 per-pupil spending ($23,661) was higher than both. Long term, Watertown has climbed from the 37th percentile in 2015–2016 to the 62nd, with dips along the way.
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