How Are Boston Students Doing?

MyCAP

MyCAP task completion data show differing trends between middle and high school students. Among students in grades six through eight, completion rates increased from SY 2022–2023 to SY 2023–2024, then declined slightly in SY 2024–2025. However, students in grades 9–12 demonstrated substantial growth over the three-year period. The percentage of high school students completing at least one MyCAP task rose from 64.8 percent to 81.9 percent, while those completing at least two increased from 43.3 percent to 67.3 percent. These trends suggest stronger engagement and sustained momentum in MyCAP participation at the high school level, while highlighting an opportunity to encourage student engagement in the middle grades.

College, Career, and Life Readiness (CCLR)

High schools have been continuing to integrate meaningful skill building and goal setting to help students succeed in college, careers, and life after graduation. Data over the past three years show mixed trends across key indicators of readiness. The percentage of students maintaining a cumulative GPA of 2.7 or higher has steadily increased from 54.3 percent in 2021–2022 to 58.3 percent in 2023–2024, and participation in rigorous coursework has grown from 42.7 percent to 51.7 percent over the same period. Engagement in anywhere/anytime learning opportunities remains high, rising to 89.1 percent in SY 2023–2024. Attendance has declined since SY 2021–2022, from 43.3 percent to 34.0 percent of students attending 94 percent or more of school days, highlighting a key area for focus. The mixed picture suggests progress in some areas, but real challenges in others. BPS is currently conducting internal research to examine differences in outcomes across student populations (by socioeconomic status, language, race), recognizing that aggregate data can mask important disparities to ensure that supports and interventions are targeted and impactful.

What Is Being Done to Support Success Throughout High School?

The full range of readiness skills, including adaptability and real-world problem-solving, are developed through students’ combined experiences within and outside of school. Within schools, educators are trained on high-quality instructional materials by partners to support students’ knowledge, inquiry, and problem-solving skills. BPS also employs proactive, school-based practices grounded in the Multi-Tiered System of Supports framework, ensuring students across the full range of learning profiles are prepared to engage. Building on these supports, from sixth grade through the postsecondary transition, students develop their unique MyCAP to reflect their evolving interests and goals. Outside of school, students build and apply readiness skills through relationships with employers, colleges, and community members who model readiness skills and show why they matter.

Where Is More Support Still Needed?

While MyCAP engagement in grades 9–12 helps students set goals and build foundational skills, earlier and more consistent support is needed. Although engagement in grades 6–8 has begun, limited capacity has slowed expansion, leaving many middle school students without the structured guidance needed to build early awareness and direction. At the same time, access to planning and early college and career opportunities remains uneven across schools, meaning not all students receive the exposure and support needed to build strong academic identities and aspirations. Together, these gaps highlight the need for more coordinated and equitable systems to ensure all students can meaningfully plan for and pursue their futures.

Why This Matters for the Full Pipeline and What’s Next for Boston

College, career, and life readiness is not an end point; it is the transition point that shapes whether students persist through college, complete credentials, and ultimately achieve economic self-sufficiency and active civic participation. Over the past decade, it has become increasingly clear that achieving ambitious goals for high school graduation, college completion, and workforce entry requires rethinking how we engage students and prepare them for life and work in the 21st century. This has meant expanding MyCAP implementation into earlier grades, creating programs to help students visualize career paths, and building partnerships with employers and colleges that show students why academics matter. Yet the data also reveal an urgent reality: In a rapidly changing economy, preparing students for careers we know about is not enough. We must prepare them for adaptability, critical thinking, problem-solving, and resilience. These are the capabilities that will allow them to thrive as the economy changes. This requires different kinds of learning experiences than traditional classroom instruction alone provides. These experiences can only happen through partnerships.

What's next:

1. Continue efforts to solve the attendance crisis. Attendance is predictive and actionable. BPS is using data-driven strategies to address attendance at the school, region, and district level. It is imperative that we have citywide efforts and build on BPS efforts by including closer family engagement, flexible scheduling, mental health support, transportation solutions, and other supports that extend beyond schools.
2. Expand middle-grade career exploration. Provide all sixth- and seventh-graders with exposure to diverse career paths and opportunities to explore interests. Partner with employers and community organizations to make this real, not abstract.
3. Deepen employer partnerships. Employers hire graduates and shape what skills matter. Coordinate with more employers, including small businesses, to increase internships, apprenticeships, and mentorship opportunities that expose students to real work and build skills while in school. Partner with employers to ensure they are prepared to support students’ work-based learning and actively recruit diverse talent from Boston schools.
4. Strengthen equitable access to school choice information and guidance. Boston Public Schools is well positioned to improve how students and families access and understand school choice options by strengthening navigation supports throughout the process.
5. Align postsecondary support. Coordinate efforts among high schools, colleges, and workforce development organizations to ensure that students who graduate with a plan for postsecondary education or careers receive support through completion.

The college, career, and life readiness data in this section document one critical point in the cradle-to-career pipeline. How well prepared high school students are shapes whether they will enroll in college, complete credentials, enter promising careers, and ultimately contribute fully to Boston’s economy and civic life. This is not just a school responsibility. It is a shared responsibility of all of us, including employers who hire these students, universities that educate them, community organizations that support them, and families who raise them, to ensure that every Boston high school student graduates with the skills, knowledge, relationships, and guidance necessary to reach the futures they envision for themselves.