Clifton T. Barkalow School, Freehold NJ

Original Research by School Decision on Clifton T. Barkalow School

Clifton T. Barkalow School serves as the sole public middle school for the Freehold Township School District, enrolling students in sixth through eighth grade. The school sits on Stillwells Corner Road in Freehold Township, the more suburban and rural half of the Freeholds region. The nearby Freehold Borough is the county seat of Monmouth County, a commuter town roughly thirty miles from Manhattan with a walkable downtown core around the courthouse and Victorian-era homes. The township itself covers a larger area with permanent open space and a mix of subdivisions and farmland. The broader region is a commercial hub anchored by the Freehold Raceway Mall, though the historic Freehold Raceway closed at the end of 2024, potentially opening land for redevelopment.

The school enrolls about six hundred students, a typical size for a middle school serving a suburban district. The student body is predominantly white, with a substantial Hispanic minority of roughly one in seven students, followed by a smaller Asian share and a Black share of about one in twenty. Around one in eight students qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, a relatively low poverty rate that aligns with the area’s fairly high housing costs. Typical home values in the surrounding zip code run well above the national median, and rents are similarly elevated. The county’s housing market is moderately active, with homes selling after about a month on the market on average.

On state assessments, Barkalow shows a clear strength in English language arts. Proficiency rates in each of the three middle grades are solid, with seventh grade hitting the highest mark and sixth and eighth grades not far behind. A parent can expect most students to meet state standards in reading and writing. Math tells a more uneven story. In sixth and seventh grades, a solid majority of students score proficient, but the eighth-grade math proficiency rate drops sharply, falling well below the school’s own sixth- and seventh-grade levels. Science results at eighth grade are also low, with fewer than one in five students scoring proficient. That science figure is worth a closer look from a family considering the school, though the one data point covers only a single year and a single grade. Overall, when averaging across all tested subjects and grades, the school’s proficiency index places it above the midpoint among the districts in Monmouth County, a meaningful signal that its academic performance is competitive with many of its neighbors.

The district recently secured voter approval for a substantial bond referendum that will fund building improvements across all eight schools, Barkalow included. The work, scheduled to begin in the summer of 2026, will replace roofs, HVAC systems, fire alarms, and windows, add secure vestibules at every school, and convert open pod-style classrooms at two elementary schools into permanent walled rooms. The district has not undertaken a building referendum of this scale in many years, so the upgrades represent a generational investment in facilities. Families moving into the area should expect the cost to show up in local property taxes.

For a family looking at this school, the takeaway is a middle school with solid literacy outcomes, a math program that performs well in the earlier middle grades but struggles with eighth graders, and science results that signal room for improvement. The student population is economically fairly advantaged and largely white, in a suburban township with a stable housing market and a downtown commuter hub nearby. The district is in the early stages of a major facilities overhaul that will modernize the school environment. The school does not offer any specialized magnet or charter programs; it is a regular public middle school serving its neighborhood attendance zone.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 657%

School 57% · District 56% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▲ 23 pts above state median · ▲ 4 pts above county median

Grade 763%

School 63% · District 62% · ▲ 1 pts above district

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

Grade 835%

School 35% · District 30% · ▲ 5 pts above district

▲ 18 pts above state median · ▲ 5 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 670%

School 70% · District 68% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▲ 16 pts above state median · ▲ 2 pts above county median

Grade 774%

School 74% · District 71% · ▲ 3 pts above district

▲ 16 pts above state median · ▲ 5 pts above county median

Grade 867%

School 67% · District 70% · ▼ 3 pts below district

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

Science

Grade 818%

School 18% · District 21% · ▼ 3 pts below district

▲ 5 pts above state median · ▼ 4 pts below county median

This schoolFreehold Township 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 6Lower-income52%Higher-income72%20 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income59%Higher-income75%16 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income42%Higher-income71%29 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 6Lower-income48%Higher-income58%10 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income35%Higher-income66%31 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income30%Higher-income36%6 pp gap