The top reported proficiency rate is 83% in English language arts. The lowest is 45% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Demarest Middle School
Demarest Middle School is a regular public school in Bergen County that serves students in fifth through eighth grade. It is one of three schools in the Demarest School District, which also includes County Road School (pre-K through first) and Luther Lee Emerson School (grades two through four). After eighth grade, students attend Northern Valley Regional High School at Demarest, a regional school shared with the neighboring communities of Closter and Haworth.
The school sits in Demarest, a small, mainly residential borough. The community is affluent and suburban, with single-family homes dominating the landscape. Housing values in the area are high, well above both state and national benchmarks. A large share of households are married couples with children, and the borough’s population has been relatively stable, with modest growth in recent decades followed by a slight decline. There is no traditional downtown commercial strip; civic life centers on the Duck Pond, the historic railroad depot used for community events, and the volunteer fire department and ambulance corps. Bus service from a stop near the Duck Pond provides a route to Midtown Manhattan, which matters to families who commute.
The school itself enrolled a total of just under four hundred students, spread fairly evenly across grades five through eight. The student body is predominantly white and Asian, with a very small number of Black and Hispanic students, along with a handful of students who identify as two or more races. Poverty, measured by free or reduced-price lunch eligibility, is minimal—only a tiny fraction of students qualify. That profile is consistent with the borough’s high income levels and low poverty rate. Data on students with disabilities and English learners was not available in the source material.
Academically, Demarest Middle School shows strong performance on New Jersey’s state assessments. The school’s overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades ranks in the top quartile among all districts in Bergen County, a large and generally high-performing county. In English language arts, proficiency rates are consistently high across every grade, with sixth grade reporting an especially strong result. In math, fifth through seventh graders also post high proficiency rates, but eighth-grade math is a notable exception: the share of students scoring at proficient or above drops sharply. A parent may want to look into this further with the school, especially given that eighth-grade math often covers algebra or other advanced content and the tested cohort here is smaller, which can make single-year results more variable. Science results, tested in fifth and eighth grades, show about half of students scoring proficient or above in fifth grade and a slightly lower share in eighth grade; New Jersey’s science proficiency cut scores differ from those used in math and ELA.
Because Demarest Middle School does not serve high school grades, no graduation rate is reported, and data on chronic absenteeism was not available. That gap is typical of middle schools that do not generate those metrics. The school is a regular public school with no charter or magnet status, and Title I status was not indicated, consistent with the very low poverty rate.
The district undertook HVAC upgrades and capital improvements across its schools during the 2022–2023 fiscal year, a change that affects the physical learning environment for students at Demarest Middle School as well as the other district buildings. No evidence of recent curriculum changes or bond referendums was found in publicly available records.
For a family placing weight on strong ELA and math results through seventh grade, a very low-poverty setting, and a small, well-off community, Demarest Middle School fits that profile. The eighth-grade math dip and middling science results are soft spots worth exploring directly with the school. The absence of a traditional downtown and the reliance on bus service for Manhattan commuting are qualities a family would experience as part of daily life, not as judgments.
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