Inside Jersey’s public high school ratings use a new, proprietary formula this year. Instead of judging schools based on a snapshot of a single year’s test scores, we compared results during a four-year period, looking for trends in student achievement.

The ratings cull data from the New Jersey Department of Education, which reported the High School Proficiency Assessment results for language arts and math tests among the general student population. Then we added SAT scores for each school and weighted them. The results separate the best schools from the worst using the same four letter grades your children see scrawled across their assignments — A, B, C and D.

Schools that had higher than average test scores earned As and Bs, schools with Bs were the ones that showed the most improvement in the last 4 years. Schools with below average scores earned Cs and Ds, but the C schools showed growth in the last year, sometimes very rapid.

To clarify:

A - Above average scores, below average growth

B - Above average scores, above average growth

C - Below average scores, above average growth

D - Below average scores, below average growth.