The standardized test performance of Winthrop public school students is declining in both English and the sciences, leaving the town with high-school scores trailing statewide averages in both subjects.

The results for this year’s Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests, or MCAS, do however show Winthrop holding a relative strength in mathematics, with annual increases and better-than-average outcomes in the subject across grade levels.

The outcomes released this week reflect the annual exams taken this past spring. It was the second year in which MCAS results no longer serve as a graduation requirement statewide, reducing the stakes that students feel from them. MCAS test results nevertheless have reflected subsequent student and career achievement, and they remain a key measure the state uses to measure and regulate the teaching performance of individual communities.

Analysis promised

Both the superintendent of the Winthrop Public Schools, Lisa Howard, and the president of the Town Council, Jim Letterie, said they had no immediate comment on the test results, pending a detailed look at the outcome. The school department expects to follow its usual practice of issuing an analysis of the MCAS results around the end of October, Ms Howard said.

The tests are given to students across Massachusetts at grades 3 through 8, and again in the 10th grade, with some variations in the subjects tested at each grade level. About 450,000 public school students took an MCAS test, about half of those eligible, down from about 475,000 students in 2023.

At the 10th-grade level, 52 percent of Winthrop students met or exceeded expectations on the mathematics test, compared to 44 percent of students at the statewide level. And across grades 3 to 8, the percentage of Winthrop students who met or exceeded expectations held steady at 42 percent in 2026 for the third straight year, after a significant climb from 26 percent in 2021.

But Winthrop’s 10th graders scored below statewide averages in both English and science. On English, 41 percent of Winthrop’s 10th grade students met or exceeded expectations, compared to 45 percent at the statewide level. And on the science, technology and engineering testing, 35 percent of Winthrop’s 10th grade students met or exceeded expectations, compared to 41 percent at the statewide level.

Middle level

And across grades 3 to 8, the percentage of Winthrop students meeting or exceeding expectations on the English test dropped from 44 percent in 2025 to 40 percent in 2026, in a gradual slide from 46 percent in 2021. In the science tests given at grades 5 and 8, the percentage of Winthrop students meeting or exceeding expectations dropped from 42 percent in 2025 to 39 percent in 2026, continuing a slight decline from the six-year high of 43 percent in both 2023 and 2024.

The MCAS also showed a series of declines statewide, prompting expressions of concern from Massachusetts education leaders. One of the most notable examples was the 10th-grade English test, where 45 percent of students met expectations, down from 60 percent five years earlier. Massachusetts students have been a perennial leader on national-scale testing, yet they continue to struggle to recover ground lost during the Covid shutdowns.

Winthrop often has performed around the middle of statewide comparisons on testing and student performance. In the local area, Winthrop’s results on this year’s MCAS fell below those of comparable sized-towns such as Marblehead, Swampscott, Stoneham and Wakefield, across the tests of English, math and science at both the 10th-grade level and the range of grades 3 to 8.

Massachusetts voters in 2024, by a margin of 59 percent to 41 percent, ended the requirement that students achieve minimum scores on the 10th grade MCAS tests in English, math and science to graduate from high school.