I Analyzed 9 Elite MA School Districts. The $700K 'Prestige Premium' Is a Scam.

🎯Bottom Line Up Front

Massachusetts families are paying $700,000 to $1.4 million in home price premiums to access "elite" school districts that deliver college matriculation rates within 4.5 percentage points and AP pass rates within 3 percentage points of moderate-income suburbs. The difference is statistically meaningless. You're not buying better schools—you're buying richer neighbors.

The Data Everyone Ignores

Here's what nobody tells you when you're touring homes in Weston or Dover-Sherborn: the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education publishes comprehensive outcome data for every district. Not just test scores—actual outcomes that matter. College enrollment. AP exam performance. Student growth year-over-year.

I spent weeks pulling official DESE data, college matriculation reports, and SAT/AP statistics for nine "top tier" Greater Boston districts. Four are prestige districts where median home prices exceed $1.15 million: Dover-Sherborn ($1.6M), Weston ($2.16M), Wellesley ($1.15M), and Lexington ($1.26M). Five are value districts where median prices range from $613K to $850K: Hopkinton, Sharon, Reading, Needham, and Acton-Boxborough.

College Matriculation: The Value Districts Win

If schools exist to prepare students for college, college enrollment is the metric that matters. Among eight districts with available 2023-24 data, the range from highest to lowest is just 4.5 percentage points.

AP Exam Performance: A 2.8 Point Spread Nobody Can Justify

Advanced Placement exam pass rates (scoring 3 or higher) show the same compression. Excluding Reading's statistical outlier of 77.4%, eight districts cluster between 89.8% and 95.8%—a range of just 6.0 percentage points.

Three value districts exceed 93.9% pass rates: Acton-Boxborough (94.3%), Needham (94.3%), and Hopkinton (93.9%). Dover-Sherborn leads at 95.8%. The gap between Dover-Sherborn and Hopkinton is 1.9 percentage points.

The Smoking Gun: Demographics, Not Teaching

If prestige district high scores reflected superior instruction, low-income students in those districts should dramatically outperform state low-income averages. They don't. They perform at state poverty averages, proving that high district scores result from educating already-advantaged students, not from teaching excellence.

MIT-reviewed analysis by the UMass Donahue Institute found that 84% of MCAS score variation across districts is explained by demographics, not instruction. Researchers stated: "That is why Weston and Wayland have high MCAS scores and why Holyoke and Brockton have low MCAS scores."

Student Growth Percentiles: The Smoking Gun Quote

Translation: Schools in moderate-income districts generate as much learning growth as wealthy districts. Hopkinton, Sharon, and Reading teach just as effectively as Dover-Sherborn and Weston. Higher absolute test scores in wealthy districts reflect parent tutoring, SAT prep courses, and socioeconomic advantages—not superior instruction.

The SAT Reality Check

2023-24 SAT data reveals that prestige doesn't correlate with outcomes:

The Final Verdict

The data is unambiguous: Dover-Sherborn, Weston, Wellesley, and Lexington deliver no measurable educational advantage despite $700K-1.4M higher median home prices and 31.5% higher per-pupil spending.

The Rational Strategy

Purchase a larger home in Hopkinton ($700K), Acton-Boxborough ($750K), or Sharon ($613K). Pocket the $450K-1M savings vs Dover-Sherborn/Weston/Lexington. Invest in college tuition where money generates actual returns.