Tag: school rankings

Schooldigger, I’m afraid your list somewhat betrays you. I assumed you noticed in the last year summarized, Ridgewood is down 2 points. Little by little Ridgewood has consistently gone downwards. A main problem is the unfairness of ranking private schools and county Academies–all of which attract the top students in any school–against public schools which must educate every student who applies. It is the true “apples vs oranges” comparison. That alone would automatically force lowering of the ranks of any public school. But Ridgewood is no where near being at the top of the public school list. Ridgewood has always had problems–terrible tenured teachers and some other very strange teachers who bullied their students–but basically it provided a great education for self-starters. Lazy kids still did not work up to their educational level–and I’m sure that is true today. Another main difference is that the respect for teachers and authority figures has declined drastically. Too many students think the whole world revolves around them and rebel against anyone telling them what to do. We also have more parents who’ll rush to the school or school board to complain that ” their darling child could never do anything wrong”. Believe me, this is not a new problem, it’s just gotten worse. A friend, who retired at least 15 years ago from being a kindergarten teacher, said that “she never thought she’d be happy to retire, but the kids today…”