The top reported proficiency rate is 82% in English language arts. The lowest is 33% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Franklin Avenue Middle School
Franklin Avenue Middle School serves grades six through eight in Franklin Lakes, a predominantly residential and affluent borough in northwestern Bergen County. The school is part of the Franklin Lakes School District, which also operates three elementary schools. Students move on to Ramapo High School, part of a regional district, after eighth grade.
The school’s enrollment is solidly sized for a middle school. The student body is overwhelmingly white, with smaller shares of Asian, Hispanic, and multiracial students and very small numbers of Black and Native American students. A very small share of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a figure that tracks with the community’s high-income profile. The data did not include counts of students with disabilities or English learners, so a parent may want to ask the school directly about those programs and supports.
Academically, the picture varies by subject and by grade. In English language arts, performance is strong across all three grade levels, with a large majority of students scoring proficient or above in each grade. In math, the results are more uneven. Sixth graders overall post a strong proficiency rate, seventh graders show a moderate rate, and eighth graders have a notably lower rate, with a minority reaching proficiency. Eighth-grade science results also show a minority of students scoring proficient or above, a figure that came from a different science assessment with its own proficiency criteria. On the district’s overall proficiency index across tested subjects and grades, the school sits above the midpoint among the 71 districts that had data within Bergen County, placing it in the upper half of the county’s districts.
Franklin Lakes itself is a low-density, car-dependent community with estate-style homes on large lots, extensive wooded open space, and no traditional downtown. The median home value and rent are very high, well above both the national and state medians, which reflects the kind of housing market a family would need to navigate to live in the attendance zone. The community’s growth has been modest, constrained by large-lot zoning and open-space preservation. Becton Dickinson’s corporate headquarters is a major employer. The district brief found no recent changes such as referenda, curriculum overhauls, or tax shifts that would meet a four-year lasting-impact bar, so a parent interested in upcoming developments would need to check directly with the district or attend school board meetings.
What this adds up to is a middle school in a high-cost, low-density suburb where a student’s academic experience depends noticeably on the subject and the grade. ELA performance is a clear strength. Math performance drops sharply between sixth and eighth grade, and science performance in eighth grade is also a soft spot. A family considering this school should explore how the school addresses math and science instruction in the upper middle grades, particularly for eighth graders. The student body is economically homogenous, a characteristic of the community rather than a judgment. The school sits in a district that performs above the county midpoint overall, but the grade-level and subject-level variation means a parent should look past the aggregate and ask about the specific supports in place for eighth-grade math and science.
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