Mac Farland Intermediate, Bordentown NJ

Original Research by School Decision on Mac Farland Intermediate

Mac Farland Intermediate serves third through fifth graders in the Bordentown Regional School District, a regular public school housed in the compact historic city of Bordentown, New Jersey. The building sits on Crosswicks Street, near the corner with Burlington Street where the restored Clara Barton Schoolhouse stands as a reminder of the city’s early commitment to public education. Bordentown itself is small and walkable, a grid of 18th- and 19th-century streets centered on Farnsworth Avenue, with the Delaware River waterfront nearby and the former Point Breeze estate site now holding the municipal complex. The surrounding Bordentown Township is more suburban and has grown more noticeably, but the city’s population has been remarkably stable over decades. Home values in the area have risen moderately and the rental market has tightened, reflecting a competitive housing environment with limited inventory.

For a school serving only middle elementary grades, Mac Farland reports no high school metrics such as a graduation rate, and chronic absenteeism data is not available. State testing results from the New Jersey Student Learning Assessment provide the clearest picture of academic performance. In math, the share of students meeting the state’s proficient benchmark varies by grade, with the highest performance seen in fourth grade and a slightly lower rate in fifth grade. In English language arts, performance is fairly consistent across grades, with roughly half to just under three-fifths of students reaching the proficient level in each grade. Science is tested only in fifth grade, and the rate of proficiency there is lower, a difference a parent may wish to discuss with the school to understand how the science curriculum aligns with the state assessment. Overall, when the school’s results across all tested subjects and grades are combined into a single proficiency index, Mac Farland ranks in the top quartile among the county’s districts, a strong relative position for a school of this grade band.

The student body of a little over two hundred children is majority white, with smaller populations of Black, Hispanic, and Asian students, and a handful of students who identify as American Indian or Native Hawaiian. About a fifth of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a share that is below the national average. Data on the number of students receiving special education services or classified as English learners was not reported in the available information, leaving a gap for parents who might want to know more about how the school supports those groups.

No information was available about programs such as gifted offerings, art, or music, nor about discipline rates or staffing ratios. The district brief turned up little publicly reported about recent curriculum changes or school board initiatives, so that context could not be included here. The absence of that data does not necessarily mean those things are absent; it simply means they were not captured in the sources reviewed.

For a family considering Mac Farland Intermediate, the school presents a solid academic record for its grade range, with proficiency rates that place it among the stronger elementary schools in Burlington County. The setting is a stable, historic small city with a walkable downtown and limited housing turnover. The main missing pieces are details on specialized programs and support services, which a parent would want to investigate directly with the school or district.

See more original research from School Decision →

Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 357%

School 57% · District 61% · ▼ 4 pts below district

▲ 7 pts above state median · ▲ 10 pts above county median

Grade 459%

School 59% · District 51% · ▲ 8 pts above district

▲ 13 pts above state median · ▲ 15 pts above county median

Grade 551%

School 51% · District 49% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▲ 8 pts above state median · ▲ 7 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 358%

School 58% · District 57% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▲ 13 pts above state median · ▲ 17 pts above county median

Grade 454%

School 54% · District 56% · ▼ 2 pts below district

▼ 1 pts below state median · ▲ 6 pts above county median

Grade 555%

School 55% · District 59% · ▼ 4 pts below district

▲ 1 pts above state median · ▲ 9 pts above county median

Science

Grade 524%

School 24% · District 27% · ▼ 2 pts below district

▼ 3 pts below state median · ▼ 3 pts below county median

This schoolBordentown Regional School District, same grade

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 3Lower-income46%Higher-income64%18 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income34%Higher-income65%31 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income39%Higher-income61%22 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income50%Higher-income60%10 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income38%Higher-income71%33 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income39%Higher-income55%16 pp gap