Accountability information: Most districts and schools did not receive an overall accountability determination in 2022. However, school accountability reports may contain additional performance information if the school has been designated underperforming or chronically underperforming, or if they have one or more low performing student groups, a low graduation rate, or low assessment participation. District accountability reports may contain additional information if the district has been designated chronically underperforming or if the district has low assessment participation.

School accountability percentile: An accountability percentile between 1 and 99 is reported for most schools. This number is an indication of the school's overall performance relative to other schools that serve similar grades, and is calculated using multiple years of data for all accountability indicators. School percentiles are not calculated for districts.

Low income and economically disadvantaged students: Beginning in fall 2021, DESE no longer reports data for the economically disadvantaged student group and instead reports data for a newly defined low income student group. Unlike the economically disadvantaged group or the former low income group used prior to 2015, the new group includes a broader range of disadvantaged students who are identified through one of three different sources:

1. Students who participate in one or more of the following state-administered assistance programs: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); Transitional Assistance for Families with Dependent Children (TAFDC); the Department of Children and Families' (DCF) foster care program; and MassHealth (Medicaid);

2. Students who are homeless, as reported to DESE by districts via the Homeless and Foster Care data collection tool; or

3. Students who are identified as low income through the Supplemental Low Income Data Collection, as reported to DESE by districts via the Student Information Management System (SIMS).

This change also impacts the membership of the high needs student group, which is an unduplicated count of all students in a school or district belonging to the students with disabilities, English Learner (EL) and former EL, and/or low income students groups.
In the 2022 accountability results, the 2022 data for accountability indicators includes students who meet the new definition of low income. Earlier data for accountability indicators includes who students who were previously identified as economically disadvantaged.