SHREWSBURY, Massachusetts – It certainly comes as no surprise to those of us in town that the quality of the Shrewsbury school system has always been exemplary, and now that fact is known throughout the nation.    The Center for American Progress has released it’s year long study of 9000 school districts around the country, and has ranked Shrewsbury in the top 2.8% of schools nationwide.  The study evaluated the ratio of student achievement in reading and math, against the per pupil expenditures, and developed three specific measurement criteria.   The first was “basic return on investment,” which was a simple analysis of achievement vs. spending.  The second criteria analyzed what the researchers called an “adjusted return on investment,” which was based on certain subgroups of the student population.  The last, was a “predicted efficiency rating,” which measured the actual performance against the typical educational performance of different school populations.

Shrewsbury was one of only six districts in Massachusetts to receive the highest possible rating in all categories.  Superintendent Joe Sawyer reported these facts at the School Committee meeting on Feb. 9th, and spoke on them in his recent column in the Shrewsbury School Journal. “Being recognized as one of the top districts in the entire U.S. for making excellent use of its resources is a great honor, and it should give everyone in our community even greater confidence that the investment we make in our schools is providing a substantial return in student performance.”

The report, “Return on Educational Investment: a District-by-District Evaluation of U.S. Educational Productivity,”  is available at this link  http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/ 2011/01/educational_productivity/report.html.