Manchester Essex Regional
1 high school and 2 elementary schools in our rankings
Students from Essex and Manchester-by-the-Sea attend Manchester Essex Regional schools, including Manchester Essex Regional High School.
Ranks #40 of 328 Massachusetts school districts — top 13%.
MCAS is the share of students meeting or exceeding expectations in 2026, grades 3–10 combined. Spending is total per-pupil expenditure in FY2024.
Manchester Essex Regional School District serves the towns of Essex and Manchester-by-the-Sea on Boston's North Shore, roughly 25 miles northeast of Boston. Both communities are coastal, with Essex known for its shipbuilding and clam-digging heritage and Manchester-by-the-Sea for its harbor and beaches. The towns are notably affluent, with high single-family assessed home values and per capita income among the higher figures in the state. Essex is home to the Essex Shipbuilding Museum, which preserves the town's long history of wooden boatbuilding.
How it compares
- Strongest area: Graduation rate, in the top 8% of districts. 98.9% of high school students graduate in four years, vs 92.4% for the average MA district.
- Top school: Manchester Memorial Elementary, #106 of 895 Massachusetts elementary schools.
- Trend: Chronic absence has fallen from 16.2% in 2022 to 8.5% in 2025.
A district's overall rank is the average statewide percentile of its ranked schools, with a 10% discount for single-school districts. Category standings compare the average of each district's ranked schools and count only districts with data. How we rank
Schools in Manchester Essex Regional
We rank high schools that report SAT results and elementary schools with grade 3 MCAS results, so some of the district's schools (middle schools, for example) aren't listed. Elementary ELA and Math are 2024–2026 averages of grade 3 results.
MCAS results
Share of students meeting or exceeding expectations, compared with the state. Statewide 10th-grade results dropped after 2024, when passing the MCAS stopped being a graduation requirement. There was no test in 2020.
High school results
Averages of the district's ranked high schools (Manchester Essex Regional High School). "MA avg" is the average of all Massachusetts districts with high school data.
Students & classrooms
53.5% female · 46.5% male · 0.1% nonbinary
Spending & teachers
Spending is total per-pupil expenditure from all sources. Dollar figures aren't adjusted for inflation. "MA median" is the middle district in each year; small districts can spend far more per student, so the median is a fairer yardstick than the average. Salary is the average across 125 full-time-equivalent teachers.
Attendance
8.7 days absent per student (MA avg 11) · 0.8% missed 20% or more of school days
About the towns
What could you afford here? · All towns A–Z
Town figures are FY2026 averages for single-family homes from the Massachusetts Department of Revenue. Assessed values usually run below recent sale prices. "MA median" is the median of the state's 351 towns.
Compare Manchester Essex Regional with nearby districts
Side by side: test scores, spending, class size, home values and taxes. Distance is between district centers. Compare with any district