Original Research by School Decision on Matawan Regional High School
Matawan Regional High School is the comprehensive public high school of the Matawan-Aberdeen Regional School District, serving students in grades nine through twelve in Aberdeen Township, Monmouth County. With an enrollment that places it in the middle range for a New Jersey high school of its grade span, the school draws from a suburban community that is a mix of residential neighborhoods, light industrial areas, and shopping centers. The student body is predominantly white, with a substantial Hispanic population and smaller shares of Black, Asian, and multiracial students. About one out of every five students qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, a share that is modest compared with many public high schools in the state.
The school occupies a single campus on Atlantic Avenue in Aberdeen. The surrounding community lacks a traditional downtown; commercial activity is strung along Routes 35 and 79, and the Aberdeen-Matawan NJ Transit station, close to the boundary with Matawan Borough, functions as the nearest civic node. The Henry Hudson Trail, a paved multi-use path originating in Aberdeen and extending east to Atlantic Highlands, offers a recreational corridor. Housing in the area is expensive relative to national norms, reflecting the broader Monmouth County market where median list prices are well above the national figure. Rents also run high, and the area’s transit-oriented development efforts around the train station point to ongoing growth interest, though no major new housing projects were identified in available sources.
The district itself reported no major recent changes such as referendums, budget shifts, or curriculum overhauls in the past several years. That stability may be relevant for families weighing long-term consistency.
A central fact about Matawan Regional High School is that state testing data and graduation rate figures were not available in the data used for this profile. For a regular high school serving the full four-year grade band, those are the metrics that most parents use to gauge academic performance and student outcomes. Their absence leaves a significant gap. Without state assessment results, it is not possible to say how students perform in English, math, or science relative to other schools in Monmouth County. Without the four-year graduation rate, it is not possible to assess how many students complete high school on time. A parent considering this school will want to seek those numbers directly from the school or from the New Jersey Department of Education’s school performance reports.
What can be described is the school’s size and demographic composition. With uniform enrollment across the four grades, the school has the scale to offer a typical comprehensive high school curriculum, though no specific program offerings—such as Advanced Placement courses, career and technical education pathways, or dual-enrollment opportunities—were listed in the data. The absence of that information does not mean such programs do not exist; it simply means they were not part of the data provided. The school’s website, which is linked in the data, would be the logical place to verify course catalogs and extracurriculars.
The school is a regular public school, not a charter or magnet, and does not appear to have Title I status. Information on special education identification rates and English learner counts was also missing. Discipline data, staffing ratios, and chronic absenteeism rates were not provided to this analysis.
For a family evaluating this high school, the bottom line is that the academic metrics that typically drive school choice—test scores and graduation rate—are not in hand. The community context is suburban, car-dependent, with an expensive housing market and some transit access. The school serves a student population that is largely not economically disadvantaged, and its enrollment is moderate in size. Parents will need to go to the school directly or consult the state’s official report card to fill in the performance picture.
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