4 generations here and I do not agree with your subjective essay about Ridgewood schools declining compared to other public schools. Your observation about no child left behind being a negative is valid for all public schools not just Ridgewood. Private schools will likely continue to benefit from this advantage but truth is they always have.
Rank History for Ridgewood High School, does not show decline.
This graph shows how well Ridgewood High School is performing relative to other high schools in New Jersey.
https://www.schooldigger.com/go/NJ/schools/1383000764/school.aspx?t=tbRankings
More excuses and BS from an obvious realtor. Blah blah blah “tradition of excellence”… blah blah blah, lies…. this property market stinks !!
Since when does rank #32 qualify as “excellent”?
In 2008, Ridgewood ranked top 10. That’s the year Dr.Fishbein took the helm…
The rankings measure how well the competition does, as well as Ridgewood school district. Without proper analysis, one can’t assume the drop in Ridgewood rankings is due to declining quality. It could just be other schools started to deliver better performance than before.
I am concerned about indoctrination in the school system though. There’s too much talk about diversity and inclusion and less about discipline and competence.
The objective behind diversity and inclusion is having teachers give enough attention to each student no matter how driven and intelligent that student maybe. Ideally that attention should be tailored to individual student needs. Sounds good so far.
In practice though this would never work. The teachers are humans too and can’t possibly be expected to optimise a bespoke approach to each student! It’s just too much work. Yet, they are asked to do just that. A result is focus on quick wins: virtue signalling and other empty slogans all to familiar to parents who deal with the same nonsense from HR at work.
What people forget is that virtue signalling takes valuable time. Time that in the traditional educational model would be spent … on learning.
School Digger’s entire ranking methodology:
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“SchoolDigger ranks schools by each school’s Average Standard Score. The school with the highest Average Standard Score is ranked #1 in the state. ”
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FWIW:
“SchoolDigger.com is a service of Claarware LLC. ”
“Claarware LLC is a one-person software development shop, founded in 2006 by Pete Claar.”
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