Analyzing School Ratings

How’s your school doing?

Among other factors, home values are directly linked to schools. Great schools bring up the prices of homes, and bad schools bring down the prices.

If you haven’t seen the news, this year’s School Ratings by Inside New Jersey has been published. Inside New Jersey is not the only school rating system but it is the first to publish their results this year.

Inside New Jersey used 4 years of data to evaluate schools. The criteria they used were the HSPA (High School Proficiency Assessment) and SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) results. Each school was given a letter grade – A, B, C or D. They didn’t score schools the way you would predict – in other words, a score of “A” isn’t the best. A score of A means, according to  Inside New Jersey, “above average score, below average growth,” whereas a B means “above average score, above average growth.” A C means “below average score, below average growth” and a D means “below average score, above average growth.”

Here are the scores:

School	Town	SAT	08 score	12 score	Pct Change	Grade
Union Cty. Magnet Hs	Scotch Plains	1940	396.8	427.8	7.80%	B
Academy For Information Technology	Scotch Plains	1763	358.9	397.6	10.80%	B
Westfield High School	Westfuekd	1741	358.7	377.9	5.30%	B
Summit Senior H.S.	Summit	1713	351.5	369.9	5.20%	B
New Providence H.S.	New Providence	1742	368.7	368.4	-0.10%	A
Governor Livingston H.S.	Berkeley Heights	1667	351.3	360	2.50%	A
Scotch Plains-Fanwood H.S	Scotch Plains	1591	337	354.7	5.20%	B
Cranford Senior H.S.	Cranford	1606	343.2	353	2.90%	A
Union Cty. Vo-Tech Hs	Scotch Plains	1510	319.8	347.1	8.50%	B
Jonathan Dayton	Springfield	1535	320.6	331.1	3.20%	A
Arthur L. Johnson	Clark	1497	318.3	325.7	2.30%	A
Roselle Park High School	Roselle Park	1396	285.3	317.5	11.30%	B
David Brearley Hs	Kenilworth	1398	297.5	299.1	0.60%	D
Rahway H.S.	Rahway	1291	248.8	277.2	11.40%	C
Union Sr High	Union	1358	269.9	277	2.60%	D
Linden H.S.	Linden	1268	243.6	261.3	7.30%	C
Hillside H.S.	Hillside	1232	227.2	246.2	8.40%	C
Abraham Clark H.S.	Roselle	1188	220.7	232.5	5.30%	C

When these scores are correlated to home values, the average value of a home in an A school district is $519,660. The average value of a home in a B district is $482,271. The average home in a C school district is valued at $280,825 and the average home in a D school district is valued at $361,800.

For more information on schools in Union County, click here. For more information on home values, click here.