A winning Keno ticket worth $40,000 was sold at a 7-Eleven in Brockton on Saturday.

Another winning Keno ticket worth $40,000 was sold at a gas station in Springfield the same day.

• Read more: Mass. State Lottery: $40,000 Keno ticket sold at Springfield gas station

In Keno, players select up to 12 numbers spots to play, and then choose numbers between 1 and 80 to fill each spot. Each number spot offers unique prizes and odds of winning.

Players then choose how much they want to wager on each drawing — between $1 and $20 — and how many drawings they want to use the same numbers for. The same numbers can be played in up to 30 consecutive drawings, and drawings take place every day every three minutes from 5:04 a.m. to 1:01 a.m.

Players can also multiply their prizes up to 10 times by marking the Keno Bonus. Keno Bonus is not available on the 10 spot, 11 spot or 12 spot.

• Read more: Mass. State Lottery winner: $25,000 a year for life prize won at Mobil station

Overall, at least 234 prizes worth $600 or more were won or claimed in Massachusetts on Thursday, including six in Springfield and seven in Boston.

The Massachusetts State Lottery releases a full list of winning tickets every day. The list only includes winning tickets worth more than $600.

So far, the largest lottery prize won in Massachusetts this year was worth $1 million a year for life.

The prize was from the lottery’s “Lifetime Millions” scratch ticket game. The winner claimed their prize through a trust on July 10, and opted to receive a one-time payment of $15.4 million.

BOSTON – Now that Question 2 has passed, removing MCAS as a graduation requirement in Massachusetts schools, are standards for high school graduation in the state practically nonexistent? One civic activist thinks so.

Will Massachusetts backslide without MCAS requirement?

“It is absolutely back to the future,” said Eastern Bank Executive Chairman Bob Rivers. “The only standard we will have left is four years attending, four years of gym and four years of civics.”

Rivers was one of a group of local business executives who joined with Gov. Maura Healey, Secretary of Education Pat Tutwiler and others in opposition to ending the MCAS standard. In an interview with WBZ-TV, he said that as a result of the 59%-41% approval of Question Two, “You’re just not going to know where your kids sit in an individual school in any particular way. There will still be an MCAS that’ll be administered, but it will become increasingly irrelevant because people won’t pay attention to it. They won’t study it. There’s already ways to opt out of it anyway.”

Campaign ads sponsored by the state’s largest teacher union, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, offered a vision of graduation standards tailored to individual students by teachers and, presumably, local school districts. But Rivers – and even some Beacon Hill supporters of Question Two – see a need for some form of statewide standards. 

Will there be new statewide education standards?

Rivers noted that one of the driving forces behind the 1993 Education Reform Act that led to the MCAS standard was concern among employers that a high-school diploma offered no reliable guarantee that the graduate had the basic skills needed in the workplace.

“We see it a lot today now, in many ways, where kids just aren’t prepared for work, the workforce, a career or higher education, and this is only going to make it, make it worse,” he said. “Before the 1993 reform law, we were not number one in the nation in public education. We are today by any particular standard [but scores have been slipping in recent years]. A competitive strength of Massachusetts is the power of our workforce. Unfortunately, by elimination of this standard, that’s been significantly damaged.”

Rivers also discussed his objections to a deal worked out between Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and other business leaders that would raise commercial property tax rates in the city above the legal limit temporarily to compensate for an expected drop in revenues due to high office vacancy rates.

U.S. News & World Report, the global authority in education rankings, has released the 2025 Best Middle Schools rankings. The report includes more than 79,000 public schools that are ranked at the state and district level.

The 2025 Best Elementary and Best Middle Schools rankings are based on publicly available data from the U.S. Department of Education. For district-level rankings, at least two of the top performing schools must rank in the top 75% of the overall elementary or middle school rankings to qualify for district-level recognition.
 
“The 2025 Best Elementary and Middle Schools rankings offer parents a way to evaluate how schools are providing a high-quality education and preparing students for future success,” said LaMont Jones, Ed.D., managing editor for Education at U.S. News. “The data empowers families and communities to advocate for their children’s education. Research continues to indicate that how students perform academically at these early grade levels is a big factor in their success in high school and beyond.”
 
The rankings methodology focused on state assessments of students who were proficient or above proficient in mathematics and reading/language arts, while accounting for student background and achievement in core subjects. Student-teacher ratios are applied to break ties in the overall score.

Here is how Fall River middle schools fared in the city and the state, according to U.S. News & World Report:

1. Henry Lord Community School #218 in Massachusetts Middle Schools

At Henry Lord Community School, 18% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 18% scored at or above that level for reading. The school’s minority student enrollment is 60%. The student-teacher ratio is 13:1, which is the same as that of the district. The student population is made up of 48% female students and 52% male students. There are 63 equivalent full-time teachers and 2 full-time school counselors.

2. Matthew J. Kuss Middle #240 in Massachusetts Middle Schools

At Matthew J Kuss Middle, 20% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 25% scored at or above that level for reading. The school’s minority student enrollment is 56%. The student-teacher ratio is 13:1, which is the same as that of the district. The student population is made up of 48% female students and 52% male students. There are 52 equivalent full-time teachers and 4 full-time school counselors.

3. John J Doran #259 in Massachusetts Middle Schools

At John J Doran, 19% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 21% scored at or above that level for reading. The school’s minority student enrollment is 59%. The student-teacher ratio is 14:1, which is worse than that of the district. The student population is made up of 47% female students and 53% male students. There are 37 equivalent full-time teachers and 2 full-time school counselors.

4. Morton Middle #312 in Massachusetts Middle Schools

At Morton Middle, 15% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 26% scored at or above that level for reading. The school’s minority student enrollment is 46%. The student-teacher ratio is 14:1, which is worse than that of the district. The student population is made up of 46% female students and 54% male students. There are 49 equivalent full-time teachers and 6 full-time school counselors.

5. Talbot Innovation School #365-487 in Massachusetts Middle Schools

At Talbot Innovation School, 11% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 12% scored at or above that level for reading. The school’s minority student enrollment is 60%. The student-teacher ratio is 10:1, which is better than that of the district. The student population is made up of 51% female students and 49% male students. There are 52 equivalent full-time teachers and 4 full-time school counselors.

Resiliency Preparatory Academy (No ranking)

At Resiliency Preparatory Academy, 10% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 10% scored at or above that level for reading. The school’s minority student enrollment is 67%. The student-teacher ratio is 9:1, which is better than that of the district. The student population is made up of 38% female students and 62% male students. There are 21 equivalent full-time teachers and 4 full-time school counselors.

Stone School (No ranking)

At Stone Pk-12 School, 10% of students scored at or above the proficient level for math, and 10% scored at or above that level for reading. The school’s minority student enrollment is 45%. The student-teacher ratio is 4:1, which is better than that of the district. The student population is made up of 31% female students and 69% male students. There are 17 equivalent full-time teachers and 1 full-time school counselor.