The top reported proficiency rate is 87% in English language arts. The lowest is 70% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Wildwood Elementary School
Wildwood Elementary School serves kindergarten through fifth grade in Mountain Lakes, a small, affluent Morris County borough that was built as a planned residential lake community early in the twentieth century. The school is part of the Mountain Lakes Public School District, a system that sends students from Wildwood on to Briarcliff Middle School and then Mountain Lakes High School. For a family considering this community, the elementary school sits inside one of New Jersey’s highest-income towns, a place with a strong tax base, a commuter rail line to New York City, and a deliberate preservation ethos that has kept the original tree-lined streets and stucco houses intact.
The student body at Wildwood is predominantly white, with a substantial Asian population and small numbers of Hispanic, multiracial, and Black students. Enrollment runs through the small-to-moderate range for an elementary school. Data on the share of students who qualify for free or reduced-price meals was not available, and the same is true for counts of students receiving special education services or English learner support. A parent who wants to understand those dimensions should ask the school directly, since state-reported civil-rights metrics are also absent from the public record here.
What is available paints a clear picture of academic performance. Wildwood’s students post proficiency rates on the New Jersey Student Learning Assessment that are well above typical levels in a statewide context. On an overall proficiency index calculated across tested subjects and grades, the school lands in the top quartile among elementary schools in Morris County. In third-grade math and English language arts, fourth-grade math and ELA, and fifth-grade math and ELA, the share of students scoring proficient or above is consistently high, and fifth-grade ELA reaches the highest single result. Fifth-grade science, measured on a slightly different proficiency scale, shows a strong but somewhat lower result, still solid by national norms. These are the achievements of a student body that enters school with concentrated economic advantage, and the school itself delivers consistently strong results across the elementary grades.
No chronic absenteeism data was available for Wildwood, and the same goes for discipline information and staffing ratios. Because the school serves only kindergarten through fifth grade, there is no graduation rate to report, which is typical for a school at this grade band. Course access offerings such as advanced academic programs or specialist classes were not listed in the data we reviewed, so a family interested in enrichment beyond the core curriculum should check with the school directly.
Mountain Lakes itself is not a place that markets itself to new arrivals through growth. The borough is nearly built out, with a small land area, a preservation-friendly regulatory posture under the Highlands Council, and property tax bills that are among the highest in New Jersey. The housing market reflects the exclusivity: home values are elevated, and the community’s character as a quiet bedroom suburb with lakes, walking paths, and a county park is the main draw. The public schools are a central reason families choose this town, and Wildwood Elementary fits that reputation. For a parent who can afford the housing market and is looking for an elementary school where nearly all students are meeting state benchmarks, Wildwood represents a high-floor academic environment. For a parent who wants economic diversity, a wide range of support programs, or a school in a growing town, the profile here may feel narrow. The data says the school does what it sets out to do at a very high level; the question is whether the community around it matches what a family is looking for.
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