How Does NJ Monthly Rank High Schools?

When last week, was ranked as the No. 20 school in the entire state. Two years ago, when the rankings were last released, the school was ranked 8th. In 2008 and 2006 the school was ranked 10th and 12th, respectively.

Eric Levin, a senior editor at NJ Monthly, said the magazine gets their data for measuring the schools from the state report cards. In the case of the 2012 ratings, the magazine , which were released in May.

Changes in how the state Department of Education (DOE) measures school data affected the rankings for several schools, Levin said.

"We're dealing with different kinds of numbers that measure different things than before," Levin said. "That has affected the ratings, in some cases a lot, in some cases a little."

Levin said the magazine did not verify information from the report cards. with the individual schools. "We don’t deal with the schools. We get all the data from these rankings from the state [report cards]," he said.

In June, Interim Superintendent Dennis Fyffe said school administrators noticed errors in the released Thursday, May 31.

One significant error was a misreporting of the percentage of senior students who took the SATs. According to The College Board, Fyffe said, 93 percent of the class of 2011 took the SATs.

"That's pretty standard for us," Fyffe said. "We're confident that number is accurate. Unfortunately the New Jersey State Report Card which is now out says that number is 78 percent. It's clearly wrong."

In response to the report of errors in the report cards, Levin said, "The schools are the ones that report the data to the DOE." He said some schools had given incorrect data to the state and their rankings in NJ Monthly had been corrected accordingly.

"I’m not totally surprised to hear that there may be other errors," Levin said.

The rankings themselves were compiled by Leflein Associates, an independent research company in Ringwood. Leflein measured three categories for the rankings in the following ways, according to NJ Monthly:

Student Performance: This category included class size; student/faculty ratio; percentage of faculty with advanced degrees; and number of AP tests offered proportional to student enrollment in 11th and 12th grades.

Student Outcomes: This category measured standardized rank scores for average combined SAT score; percentage of students showing advanced proficiency on HSPA; and students scoring a 3 or higher on AP tests as a percentage of all juniors and seniors.

School Enrollment: This category rated graduation rates, according to a new federally-mandated method for calculating the rate (four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate). The new formula divides a school's number of four-year graduates by the number of first-time ninth-graders who entered the school four years earlier.

According to NJ Monthy's listing, Chatham High has an adjusted cohort graduation rate of 96.83 percent. The student/faculty ration is 12.3, the highest of the top 20 schools in the magazine.

Students who took one of the 20 AP tests offered at Chatham High had a pass rate (3 or higher of 5) of 92.2 percent, the fourth-highest pass rate of the top 20 schools.

Levin was not directly involved in the NJ Monthly article rating high schools.