Exploring how Berkeley Heights ranks sixth out of seventh in summary of school rankings…and how to improve them

-Written by a non-politically connected Educator in the Community

Earlier this week, Niche released its 2025 school rankings. Berkeley Heights Public Schools (BHPS) rankings took a nosedive while already being ranked under neighboring, comparable districts such as New Providence, Chatham, and Madison the prior year.

It’s important to note that the proficiency measure driving these rankings occurred under Dr. Varley and the former BOE.

Summarizing these latest Niche rankings with two series of rankings previously featured on Berkeley Heights Community Watch (BHCW), below is each district’s rank within BHCW’s seven-district dashboard:

Summary of the above table:

• The majority of BHPS and Madison’s rankings are last and second-to-last, save Columbia Middle School, which came in first place for the middle schools category from the NJ School Performance Report.
• Millburn (four categories) and Chatham (two categories) round out the following first-place rankings, coming in first place and second place overall, respectively.
• New Providence, Summit, and Westfield round out a very tight race for 3rd/4th/5th place (with New Providence only two-tenths of a point behind second-place Chatham).
  

Below is the data that compiled the above table. The three separate rankings (NJ school performance, U.S. News & World Report, Niche) cannot be compared across the board as three separate metrics are used:

Rankings applied in the above table: N.J. School Performance report (published April 2024; based on the 2022-23 school year); U.S. News and World Report (published April 2024; based on the 2022-23 school year); Niche 2025 (published September 2024).

Westfield is the only district with two middle schools (averaged in the table); Average rankings among all elementary schools where a ranking was available within the district.

Improvements needed for BHPS to improve rankings (and learning from the mistakes of the past five years) include:

• Retaining great teachers and administrators:
  1. A significant number of resignations for both teachers and administrators occurred under Dr. Melissa Varley’s time as Superintendent (the past five years through spring 2024).
  2. Retaining faculty members, especially in the same grade level/course (see below), will improve teaching practices year over year.
• Keeping as many teachers with the same class load/grade level taught:
  1. School reconfiguration led to the unnecessary transfer of teachers during the mass reconfiguration of schools in 2021 (also under Dr. Melissa Varley).
  2. Keeping the same teacher teaching the same course for 3+ years is likely to create the best student instruction.
• Consistency across department (with grading, class placement, and assessments):
  1. This includes creating a school calendar allowing for more professional development and therefore more administrator-to-teacher and teacher-to-teacher collaboration.
  2. All surrounding districts – except BHPS – currently exceed the state-mandated three professional development day minimum requirement.
• Creating a ballot referendum question:
  1. In the Niche ratings, BHPS earned a “C” for “resources and facilities.”
  2. Allowing the community to vote on supporting initiatives such as facility repairs and upgrades and therefore more of the current taxes could go towards classroom instruction.
  3. See successes on ballot referendums in the past two years in Bridgewater-Raritan, Chatham, Madison, New Providence, Springfield, and Westfield.

BHCW wrote extensively on improvement one year ago in two articles:

What We Can Do to Reverse The Berkeley Heights Declines in Math, Science, and ELA Part 1: The Budget

What We Can Do To Reverse The Berkeley Heights Declines In Math, Science, And ELA Part 2: Evidence-Based Decision Making

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Sai Akiri on Building Thinking Classroom 2022

Natasha Joly on Building Thinking Classroom 2022

Sai Akiri on Proficiency Slides 2022

Natasha Joly on Proficiency Slides 2022

Dipti Khanna on Proficiency Slides 2022

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