Hillsborough Bumped from Magazine's Top Schools Ranking

Last year, Hillsborough High School boasted a ranking in the top 50 schools in New Jersey in the annual scoring by U.S. News magazine. This year, the school didn't make the cut.

The magazine's annual ranking survey scores high schools across the country in four categories: teacher-to-student ratio; college readiness; HSPA Language Arts scores; and HSPA math scores.

Hillsborough High School does well in most of the categories, with the only weakness in the college readiness score, which is calculated by the number of AP classes taken by seniors and the number passing the AP tests.

Last year, when Hillsborough was the state's 45th best school in New Jersey, the college readiness score was 25.3. This year, the school improved to 28.5.

Last year, the school reported HSPA scores of 3.3 and 3.4, in LA and math, respectively; while this year's scores are 3.3 and 3.3. Although the score slipped according to the magazine's scoring, the new School Performance Report shows the school's math HSPA scores have been stable through the last four years, with a change of less than 1 percent between 2010-2011 and the 2012-2012 school years.

Does that explain the difference in the school's ranking? Perhaps not, since the no. 50 school reported scores of 3.3 and 3.2 (and a lower college readiness index, as well).

Perhaps the difference is in the teacher-to-student ratio, which slipped from 15 to 1, to 16 to 1. Only a couple of schools in the top 50 had ratios at or above 16:1—but had either significantly higher HSPA scores or much higher college readiness scores.

If school officials wanted to make such ranking a priority, it appears all that's needed is to get students to take more AP tests—how well they do isn't always a limiting factor—and/or hire more teachers.

Somerset County school rankings

Source: U.S. News high school rankings, 2013