Ridge High School - Awards, Recognition and Rankings

Awards, Recognition and Rankings

During the 1986-87 school year, Ridge High School was awarded the Blue Ribbon School Award of Excellence by the United States Department of Education, the highest award an American school can receive. During the 2009-10 school year, Ridge High School was awarded the Blue Ribbon School Award of Excellence for a second time.

In its 2013 report on "America's Best High Schools", The Daily Beast ranked the school 215th in the nation among participating public high schools and 16th overall (ninth among non-magnet schools) in New Jersey. The school was ranked 140th in the nation and eighth in New Jersey on the list of "America's Best High Schools 2012" prepared by The Daily Beast / Newsweek, with rankings based primarily on graduation rate, matriculation rate for college and number of Advanced Placement / International Baccalaureate courses taken per student, with lesser factors based on average scores on the SAT / ACT, average AP/IB scores and the number of AP/IB courses available to students.

In the 2011 "Ranking America's High Schools" issue by The Washington Post, the school was ranked 3rd in New Jersey and 220th nationwide. Ridge High School was ranked 194th, the second-highest in New Jersey, in Newsweek magazine's 2010 rankings of America's Best High Schools. The school was ranked 175th in Newsweek's 2009 ranking of the top 1,500 high schools in the United States and was the third-ranked school in New Jersey, with 3.132 AP tests taken in 2008 per graduating senior and 50% of all graduating seniors passing at least one AP exam; The school was ranked 136th nationwide in 2008. The school was listed in 98th place, the second-highest ranked school in New Jersey in Newsweek''s 2007 list of the Top 1,200 Public High Schools in the United States. The school was listed in 116th place, the second-highest ranked school in New Jersey, in the 2006 issue. Ridge High School was ranked as Number 91 in Newsweek's 2005 survey, third-highest in the state for that year.

The school was the 9th-ranked public high school in New Jersey out of 328 schools statewide in New Jersey Monthly magazine's September 2012 cover story on the state's "Top Public High Schools", after being ranked 12th in 2010 out of 322 schools listed. The magazine ranked the school 24th in 2008 out of 316 schools. Before that, the school was ranked 11th in the magazine's September 2006 issue, which included 316 schools across the state. Schooldigger.com ranked the school 27th out of 381 public high schools statewide in its 2011 rankings (an increase of 1 position from the 2010 ranking) which were based on the combined percentage of students classified as proficient or above proficient on the mathematics (95.2%) and language arts literacy (98.0%) components of the High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA).