High School Rankings: Where Pascack Valley Falls On U.S. News List

HILLSDALE, NJ — Pascack Valley High School is the 119th best high school in New Jersey, according to U.S. News & World Report. The publication's new rankings include nearly 24,000 high schools across the nation.

This year, there were 406 schools ranked in New Jersey.

The 2022 ranking of best high schools is intended to show how well the nation's public schools serve all students, regardless of achievement level, by teaching them basic skills and preparing them for college-level work, according to a news release from U.S. News.

Families can also use the rankings to see how schools compare at the national, state and local levels on factors such as graduation rates and college readiness.

You can see the full list of Bergen County schools here.

Pascack Valley was ranked number 2,898 nationally.

Ninety percent of the rankings incorporate performances on AP and IB exams and standardized tests, while the remaining 10 percent is the graduation rate. The rankings incorporate six categories:

The data used in this year's ranking is from the 2019-20 academic school year. U.S. News adjusted its calculation of these measures to account for the impact COVID-19 had on schools in the 2019-20 school year.

Read more: These NJ High Schools Are Among 2022's Best: U.S. News

Since most states closed schools for in-person instruction starting in March 2020 — typically just before most states conduct assessments — the U.S. Department of Education granted waivers allowing all states to forgo state testing for the 2019-20 school year.

• college readiness (30 percent of the rankings): the percentage of 12th graders from the class of 2020 who took at least one AP or IB exam by the end of their senior year, and the percentage of 12th graders who earned a qualifying score on at least one AP or IB exam in high school.
• college curriculum breadth (10 percent): the percentage of seniors in the class of 2020 who took a wide variety of AP and IB courses across the multiple disciplines, plus the percentage of 12th graders who earned a qualifying score on them.
• state-assessment proficiency (20 percent): measures how well students scored on state assessments that measure proficiency in reading, science and math.
• state-assessment performance (20 percent): the difference between how students performed on state assessments and what U.S. News predicted based on a school's student body.
• underserved-student performance (10 percent): how well the student population receiving subsidized school lunch and Black and Hispanic populations performed on state assessments relative to statewide performance among students not in the aforementioned subgroups.
• graduation rate: the graduation rate for the class of 2020.

Read more about the methodology here.

But, U.S. News & World Report school rankings have their critics. James Fallows, a former U.S. News editor, even called them "meaningless" in an interview with NPR.

"The reason they started doing it back in the early 1980s under the guidance of a man named Mel Elfin, was because it was a brilliant business strategy," Fallows said. "By appealing to the human desire for rankings and knowing where you stand and where somebody else stands, they were able to make a very strong part of their business, which is now basically the only part of their business."

U.S. News, however, contends that the rankings help parents make better-informed decisions about their children's education.

"The goal is to provide a clear, unbiased picture," the report says, "of how well public schools serve all of their students — from the highest to lowest achieving — in preparing them to demonstrate proficiency in basic skills as well as readiness for college-level work."

In addition to the national rankings, U.S. News also published rankings at the state, metro area and school district levels. Only metro areas and school districts with three or more high schools were included in these subrankings.

Signature School in Indiana is at the top of the list for charter schools, and Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia is the No. 1 magnet school. The Davidson Academy of Nevada is the top STEM school.