Ridge Remains in Top 15 in U.S. News' Top High Schools

Ridge High School is this year ranked no. 14 in New Jersey, and no. 200 in the U.S., according to U.S. News and World Report's annual rating of top high schools.

Ridge was no. 12 last year, but now nine of the top 16 schools are magnet schools which are allowed to be selective about the students they admit, noted Sean Siet, assistant superintendent in Bernards Schools. As far as comprehensive public high schools — who must accept any student within the district — Ridge can be counted as the number five comprehensive school in New Jersey, according to the report's criteria, Siet said.

That criteria includes the ratio of teachers to students, college readiness, and proficiency in math and language, according to the categories in the high school rankings.

Schools Superintendent Nick Markarian said on Tuesday that he would have to study the methodology of the test to calculate how the rankings tell the story.

Nevertheless, Markarian added, "It is a wonderful affirmation of how much effort our students, staff and parents put into our school system."

The rankings are strongly based on Advanced Placement testing, New Jersey's High School Proficiency Assessments and average class size, Siet said.

"The first two steps [in the ranking criteria] ensured that the schools serve all of their students well, using performance on state proficiency tests as the benchmarks," Siet said in an email. "For thoseschools that made it past the first two steps, a third step assessed the degree to which schools prepare students for college-level work."

Other criteria looked at such benchmarks as whether a school's least-advantaged students were performing better than average for
similar students in the state; and the number of 12th grade students in the
2010-2011 academic year who took at least one AP or International Baccalaureate test before or during senior year, divided by the number of 12th-graders, and how well the students did on those tests, Siet said.

The number one New Jersey high school listed in the report is Biotechnology High School in Freehold, a specialized school that also was ranked as no. 8 in the nation.