Haddonfield Ranked Among Top High Schools in Nation

Haddonfield Memorial High School beat out four other South Jersey schools in a Newsweek  ranking of the nation's top 500 public high schools .

Haddonfield placed 125 out of 500 top high schools nationally. Cherry Hill East comes in at 226, Moorestown  265 and Cherry Hill West  402.

"These are challenging times for secondary education," according to Newsweek. "Cash-strapped school districts are cutting back; No Child Left Behind mandates test results; parents and students stress unabated.  Newsweek, which has been ranking the top public high schools in America for more than a decade, revamped its methodology this year in hopes of highlighting solutions. 

"We enlisted a panel of experts... to develop a yardstick that fully reflects a school’s success turning out college-ready (and life-ready) students. To this end, each school’s score is comprised of six components: graduation rate (25 percent), college matriculation rate (25 percent), AP tests taken per graduate (25 percent), average SAT/ACT scores (10 percent), average AP/IB/AICE scores (10 percent), and AP courses offered (5 percent)."

Richard Perry, Haddonfield's superintendent of schools, said this has been a "dream year" for him and the high school.

"We're extremely proud of our students and what they achieved this year," said Perry, in his first year as superintendent here. "I think it says a lot about South Jersey schools. We had four South Jersey schools that received the honors and we're proud of everyone."

Perry said Haddonfield placed 1,022 out of 1,623 schools surveyed last year by Newsweek. The new criteria this year vaulted Haddonfield into the top 1 percent of all public high schools. Perry gives all the credit to this year's senior class.

"We had a large graduating class and many of them were involved with AP (advanced placement) courses and I think that helped our ranking," Perry said. "We had seven state championships in sports, the arts had phenomenal plays and shows this year. Many of our students went on to Ivy League schools. They're service-oriented, nice kids and this ranking in Newsweek is just proof of that."