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Westfield Earns Spot on Newsweek Top Schools List

More than 70 New Jersey schools made the list of top 1,000 in the U.S. Where did the Blue Devils place?

 

Newsweek just released its list of the best public high schools in the country and Westfield ranked 352 out of the 1,000 schools to make the list.

Elsewhere around Union County's public schools, Elizabeth High School ranked 217, New Providence ranked 224, Summit ranked 251, Cranford ranked 279, Governor Livingston High in Berkeley Heights ranked 498, Jonathan Dayton High in Springfield ranked 584, and Scotch Plains/Fanwood ranked 769.

Scotch Plains/Fanwood also has three magnet schools — Union County Magnet High School (102), Academy for Science and Technology (143), Academy for Allied Health Sciences (167) — on the list.

Biotechnology High School in Freehold was the highest-ranking school in the Garden State, coming in 20th, followed by Bergen County Academies at 21 and McNair Academy in Jersey City, which earned the 48th spot. Millburn, at 83, is the state's highest-rated public high in the state. To see the New Jersey Schools that earned spots on the list, click here.

Schools must agree to participate in the Newsweek survey; if a school's officials don't agree, the school will not be on the list. No data on which schools didn't agree to be part of the survey was reported.

According to the magazine's story, “This year’s ranking highlights the best 1,000 public high schools in the nation—the ones that have proved to be the most effective in turning out college-ready grads."

Schools administrators must provide data on six components for the rankings; the percentages in parentheses indicate the weight the categories carry in the review process: graduation rate (25 percent), college matriculation rate (25 percent), AP/IB/AICE tests taken per student (25 percent), average SAT/ACT scores (10 percent), average AP/IB/AICE scores (10 percent), and AP courses offered per student (5 percent). To see the full U.S. list, click here.

  • Does the Newsweek top schools poll mean anything to you?

    (Voting has been closed for this question)
    • Yes. If they're keeping score, we want to be tops.
        36 (39%)
    • No. Some numbers don't tell the whole story.
        50 (54%)
    • Doesn't matter to me. I don't care about other schools.
        5 (5%)
    Total votes: 91
  • Your vote will only count once. This is not a scientific poll. View Results Vote!
Related Topics: Newsweek magazine and Westfield High School

Keith

2:25 pm on Monday, May 21, 2012

It might be some help to the readers if you included what Elizabeth did to rank that high. Very interesting example of making the numbers say what you want and what our educational system has become.

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Elizabeth Alterman

3:05 pm on Monday, May 21, 2012

Hi Keith, in 2009, Elizabeth High School, which had 5,300 students and was the largest in NJ, was divided into six schools to alleviate overcrowding and boost test scores. At the time, it had eight separate "houses," the Upper and Lower Academies now make up what is currently known as Elizabeth High School. According to its website, students must maintain a 3.0 grade point average. All students are expected to enroll in Honors and Advanced Placement (AP) courses and are required to take the AP exams.

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David Chmiel

3:33 pm on Monday, May 21, 2012

In addition, Keith, you can click on the links in the story to see just how all the schools from New Jersey stacked up on the six criteria used for the survey.

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Nick Tarantino

5:33 pm on Monday, May 21, 2012

Excuse me. I go to Allied Health and we are not a magnet school. Magnet is completely separate. AAHS is a part of UCVTS, as is APA, UCMHS, AIT, and UCTech, They are separate schools on one campus. Please get your facts straight. And it is not Academy for Applied Health Sciences, it is the Academy for ALLIED Health and Sciences.

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Tom Smith

8:09 pm on Monday, May 21, 2012

Public schools with specialized curricula that draw from a population that crosses traditional neighborhood or district boundaries are generally considered magnet schools. By this common definition, Allied Health is a magnet school.

Mykola Gryshko

7:40 pm on Monday, May 21, 2012

This article gave me the impression that it was an assignment for a 6th grade computers class. If you wish for people to take your work professionally, please learn to edit your writing.

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