Original Research by School Decision on Fair Lawn High School
Fair Lawn High School serves roughly a thousand-six-hundred students across grades nine through twelve, making it a mid-sized comprehensive public high school in Bergen County. It is the sole high school within the Fair Lawn Public School District and draws from a borough that functions primarily as a residential suburb of New York City, connected by two NJ Transit rail stations. The student body is majority white, with a sizable Hispanic population, a notable Asian cohort, and smaller shares of Black, multiracial, and other backgrounds. About one in six students qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, a rate that is modest relative to many districts in the county.
The school operates as a regular public high school, not a charter or magnet, and serves a full range of students from the community. The district appears to have no recent major structural changes, reorganizations, or leadership upheavals publicly reported, so a parent should expect a stable institutional environment.
State testing data was not available for this school in the data provided, which means a direct read of academic proficiency in English, math, and science is absent from this profile. The same holds for the four-year graduation rate and chronic absenteeism metrics; they were not reported in the data we were given. That is an important information gap. A parent or resident evaluating the school would want to seek out the school’s state-issued performance reports or ask the administration directly about academic outcomes. The comparison fact-set intended to position the school among the county’s districts could not be produced because the key metrics were missing. Without those numbers, this narrative cannot tell you whether Fair Lawn High School’s test scores or graduation rate sit above or below the middle of Bergen County high schools.
The community context is more fully drawn. Fair Lawn is a built-out suburb with a mid-century planned community called Radburn, which features a distinctive superblock layout and its own train station. Housing values in the borough’s zip code are well above the national benchmark and sit above the New Jersey state benchmark, placing the community in a higher-cost tier. The median listing price in the county has been stable around the high end, and homes spend about a month on the market, indicating a market that moves at a moderate pace. The borough has seen steady population growth, and the 2021 closure and subsequent demolition of the Nabisco plant left a large redevelopment parcel that could shape the tax base and local economy in coming years.
The school’s program offerings beyond the standard curriculum were not listed in the data, so this narrative cannot speak to the breadth of Advanced Placement courses, career and technical education pathways, dual-enrollment options, or extracurricular opportunities. A family interested in a particular program should confirm directly with the school.
Fair Lawn High School is the comprehensive high school for a stable, higher-cost suburban community with a commuter orientation. The absence of state testing and graduation rate data is the most significant limitation for anyone trying to gauge academic performance. The school serves a diverse but not high-poverty student body, and the district shows no signs of turmoil. The missing academic metrics mean a parent should treat this as an open question to investigate.
See more original research from School Decision →