District Overview

As Worcester is a large city, Worcester Public Schools has five major high schools. Doherty Memorial, North, South, and Burncoat are traditional high schools, while Worcester Tech is a vocational high school. The four traditional high schools each have corresponding middle schools, so many freshmen go into high school while still knowing many people in their class.

Worcester Public Schools district serves an extremely diverse population of students from kindergarten to 12th grade. According to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Worcester Public Schools has almost twice the percentage of African American and Hispanic students compared to the state average. There is also a large Asian population. Worcester has a strong Vietnamese and Cambodian communities.

More than half the students in Worcester Public Schools speak a first language other than English, and 30.2% of Worcester Public Schools students are English-language learners. Additionally, within the district, four out of five students are high needs. I saw this first-hand in my own classes, and worked with many wonderful English-language learners and students with diverse needs.