Summary:
Zip code 01821 in Billerica, Massachusetts is home to two high schools: Billerica Memorial High School, serving grades 8–12 with 1,816 students, and Shawsheen Valley Vocational Technical High School, a vocational-technical school serving grades 9–12 with 1,282 students. Both are 3-star schools that rank above their districts: Billerica Memorial places 123 of 353 (65th percentile) against the Billerica district's 175 of 351, while Shawsheen places 173 of 353 (51st percentile) against the Shawsheen Valley Regional Vocational Technical district's 206 of 351.
Billerica Memorial is the larger school and the stronger on current test results, beating Shawsheen in all four common 2025–26 10th-grade subjects: ELA (46.38% vs 43.28%), mathematics (41.86% vs 31.34%), science (54.86% vs 41.23%), and Biology end of course (50.00% vs 40.45%). Science is its standout, with 10th-grade science far above the state's 40.50%, while math is the relative weakness — just under the state's 43.73% at 10th grade and below state across all grades, though all-grades math improved sharply from 20.97% in 2024–25 to 37.16% in 2025–26. Its graduation rate was 97.4%, with a 1.6% dropout rate.
Shawsheen's advantages are operational: the higher graduation rate (98.1%), the lower student-teacher ratio (9.8 versus 14), and higher per-student spending ($24,777 versus $17,599 in 2020–21). Its current proficiency is mixed — 10th-grade ELA and science are near state levels, but 10th-grade math is 31.34%, 12.39 percentage points below the state's 43.73%, and its dropout rate is slightly higher at 1.9%. Note that Billerica's grade 8 results make "all grades" figures not directly comparable, free/reduced lunch data is blank for both schools, and spending figures are historical.
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