Sixteenth Avenue School, Elmwood Park NJ

Original Research by School Decision on Sixteenth Avenue School

Sixteenth Avenue School is a regular public elementary school serving prekindergarten through fifth grade in the Elmwood Park School District, located in Bergen County, New Jersey. Elmwood Park is a dense bedroom suburb roughly a dozen miles from Manhattan, a community of single-family and multi-family homes with commercial corridors along Route 4 and Market Street. The borough is auto-oriented with bus routes providing commuter access to New York City, and Bergen County’s blue laws keep most businesses closed on Sunday. Schools and civic buildings are spread across the borough rather than clustered in a downtown; Sixteenth Avenue School is one of three elementary schools in the district, alongside Gantner Avenue and Gilbert Avenue elementaries, which then feed into Memorial Middle School and Elmwood Park Memorial High School. The historic Marcal Paper Company plant was a major local employer before a fire destroyed the mill several years ago; manufacturing resumed under a new parent company. Housing in the area is priced well above national norms, typical for this part of northern New Jersey, and the rental market is similarly elevated.

The school enrolls a student body that is roughly half Hispanic, about a quarter White, and also includes smaller shares of Asian students and Black students, with a small number of students identifying as two or more races. A substantial share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Data on students with disabilities and English learners was not available from the sources examined, so a parent may want to ask the school directly about those supports and services.

State testing in math, English language arts, and science covers grades three through five. When compared with other districts across Bergen County, the school’s overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades sits in the bottom quartile. Looking individually at each grade and subject, math proficiency rates were below the midpoint across all three tested grades. In English language arts, fourth graders showed a notably stronger result, with more than half of students meeting proficiency, while third and fifth graders were lower. Science, tested only in fifth grade, showed a low proficiency rate. The pattern suggests that while the school has a bright spot in fourth-grade reading, math and science are areas where most students are not yet meeting the state’s performance benchmarks. A family moving into the area might want to discuss with the school how it supports students who are below grade level and what interventions are available.

Because the school only serves grades PK through five, there is no high school graduation rate to report, and data on chronic absenteeism was not available. The district brief turned up no major recent changes such as curriculum overhauls, property tax shifts, or bond referendums within the last several years that would alter the day-to-day experience for families. What a parent sees at Sixteenth Avenue School is a mid-sized elementary building serving a diverse, mixed-income community in a commuter suburb, where academic performance overall is in a lower range relative to the county, with some variation by subject and grade.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 322%

School 22% · District 40% · ▼ 18 pts below district

▼ 28 pts below state median · ▼ 46 pts below county median

Grade 433%

School 33% · District 36% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▼ 12 pts below state median · ▼ 32 pts below county median

Grade 530%

School 30% · District 33% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▼ 12 pts below state median · ▼ 32 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 326%

School 26% · District 44% · ▼ 18 pts below district

▼ 20 pts below state median · ▼ 38 pts below county median

Grade 466%

School 66% · District 51% · ▲ 15 pts above district

▲ 11 pts above state median · ▼ 7 pts below county median

Grade 538%

School 38% · District 48% · ▼ 9 pts below district

▼ 15 pts below state median · ▼ 34 pts below county median

Science

Grade 517%

School 17% · District 22% · ▼ 5 pts below district

▼ 10 pts below state median · ▼ 25 pts below county median

This schoolElmwood Park 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-income21%Higher-income35%15 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income53%Higher-income88%36 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income26%Higher-income61%35 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income17%Higher-income33%17 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income27%Higher-income44%17 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income21%Higher-income48%27 pp gap