Recently Methuen educator/Athletic Director Tom Ryan analyzed The “Wealth Effect” on athletic success in Massachusetts High Schools.
It’s nearly impossible to generate a “Wins per Dollar” number, adjusted by sport but some data is available.
Here are his “cut and pasted findings.
CONCLUSIONS:
Current CEM calculations fail to provide schools with higher % of low income (LI%) students a reasonable opportunity to compete for a MA State Championship. The data suggests…
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Wealth wins. Urban Schools with a higher low income % are at a severe disadvantage.
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Top 50% Enrolled Privates & Publics with <20 LI% make up 26.64% of schools but have 63.27% of Championship Appearances
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It would take a public school with >55 LI%, on average, 30 athletic seasons to make one championship. It would take a public school with <20 LI% only 4 seasons.
Vocationals schools have very little chance of competing in MIAA championships.
Low enrolled private schools have very little chance of competing in MIAA championships.
Prompt: analyze Massachusetts (MCAS) standardized testing relationship to community wealth (e.g. per pupil expenditure, average family income, median home price) for the past five years.
One-paragraph summary: Yes—the data are available, but not usually as one clean “wealth vs. MCAS” table. MCAS achievement data are available from DESE/E2C back to 2017, including district, grade, subject, achievement level, scaled score, growth, and subgroup fields; DESE also publishes per-pupil spending by district, while income/home-price proxies must usually be joined from ACS/Census, DOR, Zillow, Redfin, or municipal data. The broad relationship is clear: over the past five testing years, MCAS performance has tended to be higher in wealthier communities and lower in districts with higher poverty/high-needs shares, with the post-COVID recovery especially uneven. Harvard/CEPR reporting found the poor–nonpoor achievement gap in Massachusetts about half a grade wider than in 2019, and 2025 reporting again noted that wealthier districts generally performed better.
The key caution: per-pupil expenditure alone is a weak wealth proxy. Some high-spending districts are wealthy; others spend more because they serve higher-need students, have out-of-district special education costs, small enrollment, or urban cost structures. So the strongest explanatory variables are usually family income, low-income/high-needs percentage, English learner share, parental education, housing values, and attendance—not raw spending.
In practical terms, I’d expect the pattern to look like this:
| Factor | Expected relationship to MCAS |
|---|---|
| Average family/household income | Strong positive |
| Median home price | Positive, but proxy-heavy |
| Low-income/high-needs share | Strong negative |
| Per-pupil expenditure | Mixed/weak alone |
| Chronic absenteeism | Strong negative |
| English learner / disability share | Needs careful subgroup adjustment |
Bottom line: community wealth predicts MCAS outcomes better than school spending does, but neither proves causation. The more honest statement is: Massachusetts MCAS scores reflect both school effectiveness and the unequal social capital students bring to school.
Extracting data from individual schools is difficult, especially in the private school arena. To attend a private school, family financial sacrifices or tuition assistance may be needed, and how that relates to 1) income or 2) catchment area isn’t readily available. That is a major limitation to the analysis.