Niche's 2023 Best Public High Schools In NJ: See How Summit Ranked

SUMMIT, NJ — Niche released its 2023 Best Schools and Districts rankings on Tuesday, and Summit High School was ranked amongst some of the best.

Summit High School was ranked 25th on the "2023 Best Public High Schools in New Jersey." This is a drop from last year's ranking, where Summit earned the #9 slot.

Niche — a website known for its extensive rankings of schools, universities and communities — evaluated 92,743 public schools, 30,112 private schools and 11,820 school districts nationwide in its newest ranking. The platform combined user input — ratings from current students, alumni and parents — with quantitative data.

Read more: NJ's 'Best' High Schools: New Rankings Released

Summit trails behind local districts like Millburn High School (17), Livingston High School (22) and Union County Vocational-Technical High School (18) in the new ranking.

Union County Magnet High School earned the highest ranking for all Union County schools at #5. (See below for the full list).

Kent Place School in Summit also ranked #8 on Niche's list of the best private schools in NJ. Some local private schools it trails behind include The Pingry School, Newark Academy and Delbarton School. You can view the complete list here.

Niche said its rankings differ from others that rely almost exclusively on test scores and academic performance in that it also includes input from students, alumni and parents, as well as quantitative data from sources such as the U.S. Department of Education to evaluate teachers, resources and facilities. Niche incorporated nearly 2.5 million school reviews from students, parents and teachers — the largest online collection of school reviews, according to the platform.

But high school rankings have their critics. In 2013, journalist and former professor and The Atlantic writer John Tierney argued that high school rankings are "nonsense."

"Parents might be able to use that information to find an affordable residence near good schools, while still leaving themselves within reasonable reach of their place of employment," Tierney wrote. "It's harder to fathom the logic for ranking high schools nationwide. Few are the families who will move out of state or across the country on the basis of claims about school quality."

School ratings have the power to drive segregation, contends Jack Schneider, an associate professor of education at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

"There’s evidence that this is already happening via websites like GreatSchools.org and Niche.com," Schneider wrote last October for WBUR. "Privileged parents compete against each other in the real estate market to buy homes near 'good' schools, while lower-rated schools suffer reputational harm and serve increasingly disadvantaged students."

As in previous years, the Best Schools rankings include categories for boarding, charter and magnet schools as well as schools for STEM and the arts among many others.

Here are the best NJ public schools, according to Niche:

1. High Technology High School (Monmouth County Vocational School District)
2. The Academy for Mathematics, Science & Engineering (Morris County Vocational School District)
3. Bergen County Academies (Bergen County Vocational Technical School District)
4. Biotechnology High School (Monmouth County Vocational School District)
5. Union County Magnet (Union County Vocational-Technical School District)
6. Academy for Information Technology (Union County Vocational-Technical School District)
7. Marine Academy of Technology & Environmental Science (Ocean County Vocational Technical School District)
8. Bergen County Technical High School - Teterboro (Bergen County Vocational Technical School District)
9. Middlesex County Academy for Science, Mathematics & Engineering Technologies (Middlesex County Vocational & Technical School District)
10. Dr. Ronald E. McNair Academic High School (Jersey City School District)
11. Academy for Allied Health Science (Union County Vocational-Technical School District)
12. Princeton High School (Princeton Public Schools)
13. West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South (West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District)
14. Academy of Allied Health & Sciences (Monmouth County Vocational School District)
15. Tenafly High School (Tenafly Public School District)
16. West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North (West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District)
17. Millburn Senior High School (Millburn Township School District)
18. Union County Vocational-Technical High School (Union County Vocational-Technical School District)
19. Marine Academy of Science & Technology (Monmouth County Vocational School District)
20. Northern Valley Regional High School Demarest (Northern Valley Regional High School District)
21. Northern Highlands Regional High School
22. Livingston Senior High School (Livingston Board of Education School District)
23. Ridgewood High School (Ridgewood Public School District)
24. Ridge High School (Bernards Township School District)
25. Summit Senior High School (Summit Public School District)

This articles includes reporting by Patch editor Josh Bakan.

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