7 public K-12 schools in Dedham from NCES Common Core of Data: enrollment, grade span, demographics, and Civil Rights Data Collection statistics for every active campus.
National city placement
According to NCES CCD 2024-25, Dedham has more public-school enrollment than 23% of the 4,487 US cities in this directory. Dedham's 7 listed schools all sit inside one district, creating a compact governance structure with one budget, board, and reporting chain. That makes citywide comparisons cleaner than in places split across several districts, but it does not make the campuses interchangeable: elementary, middle, and high-school staffing needs differ. The ranked list is best read as variation inside one system rather than competition among separate local authorities.
4 of Dedham's 7 listed schools are elementary campuses. That composition means citywide enrollment and staffing averages are influenced more by early-grade operating patterns than by the city's 1 middle and 1 high-school records. Families comparing later grades should rely on those individual rows rather than the all-school mean.
Dedham's schools share one district authority while their average Resource Investment Index ranks at the 81st percentile among listed cities. Shared governance removes one source of policy variation, but it does not erase campus differences by grade span or enrollment. The 19-point gap between Greenlodge and Dedham High measures the remaining local spread. Use the district-level picture for common budget context, then compare the school components to see whether staffing, counseling, gifted-program reporting, or attendance accounts for each campus's position.
That concentration means Dedham-wide averages can mask substantial variation outside the largest entity. Grade level: High. The share measures enrollment concentration only; it does not establish how districts allocate programs, capital, or staff. Enrollment-weighted aggregates give this entity more weight than any smaller peer, while an unweighted entity average treats every record equally.
Source: NCES Common Core of Data
Dedham school enrollment ranges from 206 students (lowest) to 719 students (highest), a spread of 513 students. That relatively narrow ratio reflects an unusually homogeneous school portfolio for a city this size. Per-school staffing and program breadth can differ sharply at opposite ends of that enrollment range, so the city average should not be treated as a typical campus.
Source: NCES Common Core of Data
Dedham's listed schools share one district boundary, budget authority, and reporting chain. That makes citywide and districtwide governance easier to compare, but it does not make individual campuses uniform: grade configuration, staffing, programs, and student need can still vary materially within the same school district.
Source: NCES Common Core of Data
student-teacher ratio is the simplest comparative metric but it does not capture the full picture: the ratio counts FTE classroom teachers against total enrollment, push-in specialists, English-language aides, special-education co-teachers, and counselors are not included in most reporting Lower values often correlate with smaller scale and population characteristics rather than higher resource budgets per se.
| # | School | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Greenlodge | 56 |
| 2. | Riverdale | 52 |
| 3. | Oakdale | 51 |
| 4. | Avery | 48 |
| 5. | Dedham Middle School | 47 |
| 6. | Early Childhood Center | 44 |
| 7. | Dedham High | 37 |
Ranked by the Simpson student-body diversity index (0-100) from NCES race and ethnicity data, where higher means a more evenly mixed student body. It measures mix, not quality.
Greenlodge has the highest Resource Investment Index among the Dedham schools in this federal-data comparison at 56/100. The index summarizes reported staffing, counseling, gifted-program, and attendance inputs; it is not an academic rating.
Dedham has 7 public schools with a total enrollment of 2,668 students. Average student-teacher ratio: 12:1.
Side-by-side: Compare any two schools or districts in Massachusetts →
Data from NCES Common Core of Data (CCD) 2024-25 and Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) 2021-22. The Resource Investment Index uses reported student-teacher ratio, counselor access, gifted programs, and attendance; it is not an academic rating. Cities must include at least five schools to be listed. This public-data comparison is for informational purposes: verify current enrollment, attendance boundaries, and programs with the school district before acting. See the guide to understanding NCES data.
