Summary:
ZIP code 01069 covers two high schools, both in Palmer, Massachusetts: Pathfinder Vocational Technical, a regional vocational-technical school serving grades 9–12 with 660 students, and Palmer High, a district school serving grades 7–12 with 416 students. Both belong to districts rated 1 star overall: Pathfinder Regional Vocational Technical ranks 256 of 351 (27th percentile) and Palmer ranks 296 of 351 (16th percentile).
The two schools are trending in opposite directions. Pathfinder's current school rank is 215 of 353 (39th percentile, 2 stars), up from 274 of 349 (21st percentile, 1 star) the prior year. Palmer High's rank is 265 of 353 (25th percentile, 1 star), down from a one-year spike of 197 of 349 (44th percentile, 2 stars) in 2024–2025. Palmer has the stronger completion outcomes — a 96.1% graduation rate and a 0.0% dropout rate, versus 94.2% and 3.6% at Pathfinder — and a lower student-teacher ratio of 8.8 compared with 9.9.
On 2025–2026 MCAS, both schools fall below the state in every reported area. Tenth-grade Mathematics is an exact tie at 35.48%, which is 8.25 percentage points below the state's 43.73%. Pathfinder leads in 10th-grade ELA (41.14% vs 29.03%) and Science (28.38% vs 12.00%), and improved 10th-grade ELA, Mathematics, and Science by 9.59, 9.88, and 5.65 percentage points year over year, while Palmer's All Grades results declined in ELA, Mathematics, Science, and 8th-grade Civics. Note that Palmer's "All Grades" figures include grades 7–8, so they are not directly comparable to Pathfinder's high-school-only data. Pathfinder spends more per student ($24,624 vs $17,532, from 2020–2021), and free/reduced-lunch percentages are not reported for either school, so socioeconomic context cannot be assessed.
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