CHERRY HILL, NJ — Cherry Hill High School East West ranked 62nd out of 406 public high schools in New Jersey, according to a newly released annual survey by US News and World Report. Cherry Hill High School West was ranked 261st.
Of all public high schools in the country, these New Jersey schools ranked in the top 100, according to the report:
- Middlesex County Academy of Sciences, Mathematics and Engineering Technologies, Edison. Ranked 23.
- Union County Magnet High School, Scotch Plains: Rank 49.
- Bergen County Academies, Hackensack: Post 61.
- High Tech High School, Lincroft: Ranked 65.
- Dr. Ronald E McNair High School, Jersey City: Rank 68.
- Middlesex County Academy for Allied Health, Woodbridge: Post 69.
- Biotech High School, Freehold: Rank 80.
- Bergen County Technical High School – Teterboro, Teterboro: Ranked 93.
The 2022 Best High Schools ranking aims to show how well the nation’s public schools serve all students, regardless of performance level, by teaching them basic skills and preparing them for college-level work, according to a news release. from U.S. News & World. Report.
To develop the rankings, US News & World Report partnered with RTI International, a North Carolina-based nonprofit social science research firm. RTI implemented a ranking methodology intended to reflect how well high schools are serving their students.
Ninety percent of the rankings incorporate performances on Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate (AP and IB, respectively) exams and standardized tests, while the remaining 10 percent is graduation rate. The rankings incorporate six categories:
- college prep (30 percent of rankings): the percentage of seniors in the class of 2020 who took at least one AP or IB exam by the end of their senior year, and the percentage of seniors who earned a qualifying score on at least one AP or IB exam in high school.
- breadth of college curriculum (10 percent): the percentage of seniors in the class of 2020 who took a wide variety of AP and IB courses in multiple disciplines, plus the percentage of seniors who earned a qualifying grade in them.
- state assessment proficiency (20 percent): measures student scores on state assessments that measure proficiency in reading, science, and math.
- state assessment performance (20 percent): the difference between student performance on state assessments and what US News predicted based on a school’s student body.
- performance of underserved students (10 percent): how well the student population receiving subsidized school lunch and the African American and Hispanic populations performed on state assessments relative to state performance among students not in the above subgroups.
- graduation rate: the graduation rate for the class of 2020.
Read more about the US News & World Report methodology here.
But the US News & World Report school rankings have their critics. James Fallows, former editor of US News, even called them “nonsense” in an interview with NPR.
“The reason they started doing it in the early 1980s under a man named Mel Elfin was because it was brilliant business strategy,” Fallows said. “By appealing to the human desire to classify and know where you and others stand, they were
able to do a very strong part of his business, which is now basically the only part of his business.
US News & World Report argues that the rankings help parents make better-informed decisions about their children’s education.
“The goal is to provide a clear and unbiased picture,” the report says, “of how well public schools are serving all of their students, from the highest-performing to the lowest-performing, by preparing them to demonstrate proficiency in basic skills, as well as preparation for college-level work.
This story also contains reporting from Alexis Tarrazi and Josh Bakan.
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