School Overview

The Worcester district comprises forty-four schools across the city. Serving grades PK-12, the district currently enrolls 23,735 students. The schools maintain a 94% attendance rate with a student to teacher ratio of 14.2 to 1. All classrooms are on the internet.

The largest population of students is Hispanic (44.7%) followed by White (27.9%) and African American (16.9%). Other populations include Asian (6%), Multi-race Non-Hispanic (4.3%), and Native American (0.2%). The majority of students are high needs (84.1%), low-income (74.3%), and non-native English speakers (58.9%).

Worcester Technical High School

Located on Green Hill, Worcester Technical High School (Worcester Tech or WTHS) is a vocational school offering twenty-two trade programs for students to practice. The school draws students from Worcester and Shrewsbury and transports most students by bus. The school population is well aware of these busses, as the morning traffic often causes late busses which disrupt first period. Everyone in the building is familiar with the daily afternoon announcement that students on bus forty should take bus fifty-four!

Every student at Worcester Tech works in one of the technical areas. These include traditional vocations such as carpentry, culinary arts, automotive technology, and graphic communications, as well as other industries in allied health and human services, construction technology, and business services. The school runs on a two week alternating schedule which rotates students through a lesson-oriented structure ("academic week") and a practical work environment ("shop week") in their technical area. Some students attend their academic classes for single periods each week, and others meet for double periods on alternating weeks.

As a result of virtual classrooms and online learning in the previous academic year, many classrooms have continued to go paperless. Students complete assignments posted in a Google Classroom and upload scans of their work to receive credit. Assessments are created, delivered, and graded using online tools like EdCite and DeltaMath. Gradebooks are kept digitally in Google Classroom and can be viewed by students and their guardians.

The demographics at Worcester Tech resemble those of the district. Of the 1,476 students, the largest population is Hispanic (566) followed by White (464) and African American (274). Many students are high needs (1,041), low-income (939), and non-native English speakers (807). By gender, 867 identify as female and 609 identify as male. No students are listed identifying as non-binary, although there are reported 994 non-binary students in the state.

Students at Worcester Tech are high-performing relative to the district. MCAS results in English Language Arts and Mathematics are well above the district averages and are slightly above the state averages. The scores for English Language Arts are meeting expectations, and the scores for Mathematics are on the cusp of meeting and partially meeting expectations.

The school's four-year graduation rate was 98.9% in 2021. The majority of graduating students planned to pursue a higher education, either at a four-year college (55.6%) or a two-year college (12.4%). Some students planned to go into industry or work (17%), join the military (2.6%), or were undecided (11.8%).