Fort Lee High School Still Among State’s Top 100, Drops in Rankings

once again ranked among the state’s top 100 high schools, according to New Jersey Monthly’s biennial report, but the local school dropped from 72 in 2010 to 97, according to a formula based on state Department of Education (DOE) data for the 2010-2011 school year.

The data upon which New Jersey Monthly’s rankings are based comes from the DOE’s most recent New Jersey School Report Card and includes only public high schools for the top 100 schools, according to the publication, with charter schools left out of the mix.

According to New Jersey Monthly, the following categories were used “as indicators” in compiling the rankings:

• School Environment, which includes such data as average class size, student-faculty ratio, faculty with advanced degrees and AP tests offered.

• Student Performance, including average SAT scores, students scoring 3 or more on AP tests and the percentage of students achieving advanced proficiency on HSPA.

• Student Outcomes, which is based on a new, federally mandated graduation rate calculation implemented by New Jersey in 2011 that “divides a school’s number of four-year graduates by the number of first-time ninth-graders who entered the cohort four years earlier,” according to New Jersey Monthly.

New Providence High School in Union County, which ranked fifth in 2010, was the number one high school in the state, according to New Jersey Monthly. New Providence was followed in the rankings by Jersey City’s McNair Academic; Tenafly; Glenn Rock, which rose from number 28, and Kinnelon, which was up from number 21 in 2010, to round out the top five, the report shows.