Data-Driven Education Journalism for the Pine Tree State
Education News & Data
Local education reporting from every corner of Maine, grounded in Maine Department of Education data.
Maine's graduation rate recovered to 87.3% after a COVID dip, gaining nearly 3 points since 2012. But gaps for homeless students and English learners were wider in 2023 than in 2012.
Maine's special education graduation rate rose 6.6 points from 2013 to 2023, narrowing its gap with the statewide rate from 17.4 to 12.9 points.
Maine's statewide graduation gender gap fell to 2.7 points in 2023, its narrowest across 12 published cohorts, after moving in both directions for years.
Maine Virtual Academy added students in every annual transition in Maine's available enrollment panel while most stable-panel districts shrank.
Nearly half of Maine districts with three years of data improved chronic absenteeism in both consecutive years. Only 15 worsened in both. The breadth of improvement suggests systemic recovery, not isolated success stories.
Economically disadvantaged students in Maine are chronically absent at 35.0%, nearly double the 17.6% rate for their peers. The gap narrowed 3.2 points in two years but remains the state's deepest structural divide.
Maine's 9-12 enrollment has barely budged in nine years, falling just 4.3%. But K-8 has lost 11,198 students, and today's kindergarten classes are 2,320 smaller than grade 9.
Saco Public Schools added 179 students over nine years, making it the largest traditional district gainer in a state where 88 districts hit all-time lows.
Maine's Black and white students are chronically absent at near-identical rates, a parity rooted in the state's Somali, Congolese, and Sudanese immigrant communities.
Maine's multiracial enrollment surged 62% in nine years to 6,652. Three growing groups converge as white enrollment sheds nearly 20,000.
Lewiston's enrollment held within 3% of its 2017 level while twin-city Auburn, separated by a bridge, declined 9.1% over seven years. Immigration is pulling the two cities apart.
Students from Maine's migrant farmworker families cut chronic absenteeism by 21.9 points from 2022 to 2024, the largest gain of any subgroup.
Eighty-three of Maine's 214 districts hit all-time lows in 2026, including Portland, as three years of accelerating decline force budget cuts statewide.
Maine's English learner population surged 54% in nine years even as total enrollment fell, driven by refugee resettlement and asylum seekers in Portland and Lewiston.
Maine's pre-K enrollment surged 30% while kindergarten fell 14.8%, the steepest grade-level decline in the state. The divergence reveals a policy success colliding with a demographic wall.
