Since I did not grow up or go to school in New Jersey I chose to compare the two public highschools that my stepson had the option of attending upon graduating from a Catholic elementary school in Fort Lee. I compared Ft. Lee High School and Cresskill High School. I live in Cresskill and am constantly reminded of the great reputation that their school system has. I have seen the fruits of this system in the progress of my niece and nephew and, now through my stepson's current experience. After 9 years of Catholic elementary school with little to offer in the way of music or the arts, he is thriving in the numerous programs that are offered at Cresskill. I'm am impressed on a daily basis by the work that he brings home and the projects that he is a part of.
In reading the reports of these two high schools I found a few key differences and similarities. First of all Ft. Lee's enrollment is twice the size of Cresskill's. Both have very impressive numbers when it comes to standardized test scores and graduation rates. Twenty percent more from Cresskill went on to 4 year colleges and Cresskill had double the number of Advanced Placement students across the board. Both schools were above the state averarge with test scores and graduation rates and well below with suspension, expulsion and dropout rates. Having worked and lived in both communities I know that there is a large transient population of Korean students that come and go rather frequently making for a constantly changing demographic and student population. According to the report card, Cresskill had significantly more Korean speaking students than Ft. Lee. I found that very surprising. The number of Korean speaking students at Cresskill was at about half the number of English speaking students. Ft. Lee's Korean speaking population was about 10% less.
Overall both schools had pretty impressive report cards but considering the lower number of overall students at Cresskill and the even slightly higher numbers where it counts, I believe we made the right choice.
Hi Shari,
ReplyDeleteWe spoke a bit about the Cresskill school system on the first day of class. This is one of the towns we are considering moving to or may just send our boys there. I hear (have not confirmed) that Englewood Cliffs can send students to Cresskill for a fee). You support all I hear about the school. I also used Cresskill in my comparison and did note the high Korean population which I thought a bit odd because all the neighboring area have high Asian populations (not just Korean). I wonder why this is? It would be interesting to dig and find out. I am glad you family is happy with the school system, this makes me feel certain that Cresskill is a good option for us. I like the smaller school size having attending a very large High School in he city.
It's interesting reading about all the different districts people researched. Glad to hear you're happy with your choice of school district!
ReplyDeleteEileen
I too am happy that the report cards for these two schools matched up with your experience. More importantly, your stepson is thriving and you are happy with your choice. I'm enjoying learning a little more about towns and schools I don't know much (or anything) about. I've heard of Fort Lee but not Cresskill. Thanks for a great comparision of the two.
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