Ten Vermont districts are about Washington Central's size, with similar household incomes and a similar share of low-income students. Compared with them — and with all 29 districts that run K-12 systems — four problems stand out. In math and science, the district trails the peers it most resembles; the other three run deeper.
Finding 1 · Survives every peer group
Washington Central gets students to a diploma at close to the best rate in the state — 89%, third of 28 districts. Then it loses them. Of the class of ’23-24, 43.1% enrolled in college or training within 16 months, against a close-peer median of 60.6%.
The cliff came in two years, not ten
Share of graduates continuing to college or training within 16 months
Vermont Annual Snapshot, college & career readiness. 23 of 30 districts report.
The decline is not a slow slide: the classes of ’18-19 through ’20-21 plateaued between 58% and 66%, then fell by nearly thirty points in two graduating classes. Peers dipped in the same years — and have recovered. Washington Central hasn’t.
Finding 2 · Survives every peer group
Every Vermont district is shrinking. Washington Central’s kindergarten decline (−20% over the decade) is ordinary — the statewide median is −17%. What is not ordinary is where the students go afterward: senior-class enrollment fell −32%, second-worst of all 30 districts, against a median of −9%.
The leak is in the secondary grades, and it is accelerating. Elementary grade-to-grade retention is unchanged since the five town districts merged. Every secondary transition weakened — and the jump from junior to senior year most of all: 91% of juniors returned as seniors before unification, 82% since.
The last two cohorts are worse than the average. The class of ’23-24 lost 19% of its juniors (108 → 87). The class of ’24-25 lost 33% (121 → 81) — forty students gone between junior and senior year.
Enrollment data alone can’t say where they went: Early College, transfer, and dropout look identical in a fall head count.
One explanation would soften the finding, and it deserves to be named. Vermont law lets a senior spend the year enrolled full-time at a college instead, tuition-free — and a student who takes that route is, by statute, struck from the district’s enrollment count and its pupil count for the year (16 V.S.A. § 946; districts record the exit as a transfer to a college program). A school where Early College is popular will show a smaller senior class than it actually produced. Statewide, 433 seniors — 8 percent of the class, a record — took that route in 2024-25 (AOE, March 2026). Typical uptake does not cover a 33 percent cohort loss; uptake well above the state’s could cover a real share of it. Whether Washington Central’s is, the public files don’t say.
If Early College is the explanation, it is not a neutral one. A senior class of 81 where 121 juniors stood is thinner for the students who stay, and the one randomized study to look at the question found early-college students took part in sports, arts, and other school activities less than their peers (Edmunds et al., 2026). Most Vermont Early College seats are at the Community College of Vermont, and the research on starting college at a two-year school points one way: in the most careful state-level study, students who intended a bachelor’s degree and started at a community college were about 15 percentage points less likely to finish one within nine years than similar students who started at four-year schools (Long & Kurlaender, 2009) — largely because too few transfer, and credits are lost when they do (Monaghan & Attewell, 2015). Washington State’s Running Start, the closest studied cousin of Vermont’s program, raised college attendance overall but lowered four-year attendance in the year after high school (Cowan & Goldhaber, 2015).
The strongest evidence in Early College’s favor — randomized lottery studies showing higher degree completion — studied a different animal: small schools built around the model from grade 9 up, not a single senior year at a community college. Even there the gains came through associate degrees, and ten years on the bachelor’s-degree advantage had washed out. Vermont has never evaluated its own version against a comparison group, and the state’s descriptive follow-ups cut both ways: nearly all Early College students finish the year, but roughly one in five enrolls in no college at all the following fall (VSC legislative report, 2024). So Early College cannot be assumed to lift a school’s college-continuation number. Washington Central’s fell.
What would settle it: the district’s own Early College and dual-enrollment counts by year, and where those students stand a year later — numbers the public files don’t carry. Forty students is a fifth of a class. Better data is needed to answer this one conclusively, and this report leaves it open.
Where each grade-to-grade transition changed since unification
Average cohort retention, pre-union (through ’18-19) vs. post-union (’20-21 on), percentage points
AOE enrollment collections; predecessor town districts summed onto a consistent footprint.
Finding 3 · How it got here matters more than where it is
Washington Central’s chronic-absenteeism rate — 25.1% in ’23-24 — is indistinguishable from the statewide median. The problem is how it got there. In ’17-18 it had the best attendance of all 28 reporting districts. It held that advantage straight through the COVID year that broke everyone else. Then it surrendered all of it in a single year.
One year erased a decade of advantage
Share of students chronically absent (missing ≥ 10% of school days)
Vermont Education Dashboard, chronic absenteeism (both statuses). ’20-21 spans remote and hybrid attendance counting — read gently.
The initial recovery from the ’21-22 spike was actually the fastest of the close-peer group. It has since stalled: in the latest year Washington Central improved −1.2 points while the median close peer improved −3.9. At current pace, the district that once led the pack by seven points falls behind it.
Finding 4 · The close-peer comparison
Statewide, Washington Central's scores look strong — 9th of 30 in math, 11th in science. But the statewide table mixes in districts far poorer than Washington Central. Against the ten districts most like it, the scores are ordinary: math 45.1% against a peer median of 47.7% (6th of 11), science 46.3% against 50.5% (7th of 11).
The direction is wrong too. On the current test, math has slipped −1.7 points since ’22-23 while the median close peer gained +1.6.
Math did improve against the state after unification — that is not the point
Gap to the Vermont average in math proficiency, percentage points
AOE assessment files; gap to state computed within each test era. No adjusted view is shown for ’21-22 (test transition).
The improvement against the state since unification is real — math was 4.6 points below the Vermont average before the merger. It is also not the standard the district holds itself to. Its peers are, and there it trails and is losing ground. English is the exception, ahead on every comparison.
For balance
Two things hold up on every comparison — close peers, the full state, and demographic expectation.
English proficiency shows no swing at all — 8 to 11 points above the state in every observed year since ’17-18, before and after the merger. It is a steady strength, not a recent one.
Multi-year shifts, single-year noise excluded
Washington Central unified in 2019-20. Comparing the constituent-district era (through ’18-19, town districts summed) with the current one:
| Series | Pre-union | Now | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Math vs. state | −4.6 pts | +7.1 pts | the union era’s clearest improvement |
| Junior → senior retention | 91% | 82% | accelerating; −33% latest cohort |
| Postsecondary rate | 58–66% | 36–43% | two-year cliff, partial rebound |
| Absenteeism vs. state | −8.8 pts | −2.4 pts | advantage surrendered in ’21-22 |
| Low-income share vs. state | −10.2 pts | −0.6 pts | converged to the state average |
The last row bears on the others: the student body Washington Central serves today is measurably less affluent, relative to Vermont, than the one its constituent districts served. Holding test scores steady across that shift counts for something — and it is why the enrollment and postsecondary numbers, which did move, deserve the attention.
Provenance
Every claim is tested against two groups. The ten closest peers — nearest to Washington Central by enrollment, share of low-income students (Act 127 direct certification), and median household income (Census ACS, town medians weighted across each district’s member towns) — and all 29 Vermont districts operating K-12 systems with current data. Findings labeled “survives every peer group” hold in both, and at every group size in between.
Caveats: postsecondary is reported by 23 of 30 districts; spending by 23; ’20-21 attendance spans remote/hybrid counting. District income is a household-weighted mean of town ACS medians, not a true district median. Enrollment windows cross Act 46 reorganizations; predecessor districts are summed onto a consistent town footprint. Chronic absenteeism is pulled from the live state dashboard with both status counts, so rates use the dashboard’s own denominators.
Every number regenerates from the same public-data pipeline as the interactive tools at hungermountaini.com. Check the work:
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