Oliver Street School, Newark NJ - Test Scores & Data

Original Research by School Decision on Oliver Street School

Oliver Street School is a regular public school in Newark’s Ironbound district, serving students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. It is part of the Newark Public School District, which was declared a High Performing District by the state in 2026, a meaningful shift for a system that had been under state control for more than two decades and returned to local governance several years ago. The school itself is a neighborhood elementary-and-middle school, not a magnet or charter, and it draws from the surrounding residential blocks in a dense, mixed-use ward of the city.

The student body is predominantly Hispanic, with a substantial minority of white students and a much smaller share of Black students. A large majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, placing the school in a high-poverty context. Enrollment is steady across the elementary and middle grades, with no dramatic falloff between kindergarten and eighth grade, which suggests families largely stay enrolled through the full pre-K-to-8 span.

Academically, Oliver Street shows a split pattern by subject. In English language arts, the school produces middle-of-the-road results in the early grades and improves markedly by seventh grade, where proficiency rises to a level that would be considered solid in any context. Eighth-grade ELA remains respectable. In math, the story is different. Grades three through seven post modest proficiency rates that are below what many families would hope for, and eighth-grade math drops to a very low level. Science proficiency is also low in both fifth and eighth grades, with eighth-grade science particularly weak. A parent looking at this school would want to ask how the school supports students who struggle in math and science, especially in the upper middle grades, and what interventions or curriculum changes are in place for eighth graders.

The school building sits in Newark’s East Ward, in the Ironbound section, a historically immigrant neighborhood known for its Portuguese, Brazilian, and Spanish-speaking communities. The Ironbound is denser than much of Newark, with narrow streets, rowhouses, three-family homes, and a strong commercial corridor along Ferry Street lined with restaurants and shops. The neighborhood has its own civic identity within the city, and Oliver Street School is the neighborhood school for that area. Housing values in the 07105 zip code are above the national median but have been flat to slightly down recently, and rents have eased a bit, reflecting a market that remains expensive for many local families but is not currently accelerating.

The district has been investing in new school options, including career-themed high schools downtown, but those are high-school-level pathways and do not directly affect Oliver Street’s academic program. The district’s strategic plan, The Next Decade 2020-30, is a broad framework for improvement, and the High Performing District designation signals that the central administration has made gains in oversight and operations. For a family considering Oliver Street, the relevant question is whether those district-level improvements translate into classroom support at this specific building.

Compared to other districts in Essex County, Oliver Street’s overall proficiency index sits below the midpoint of the county’s districts. That comparison includes the full range of districts, from wealthy suburbs with very high performance to other Newark schools and urban districts facing similar challenges. The school’s position in that spread reflects the broader difficulty of raising math and science achievement in a high-poverty setting.

There is no graduation rate to report because the school ends at eighth grade, and the data does not include chronic absenteeism or special-education and English-learner counts, so a parent cannot assess those dimensions from this profile. The school website and school visits would be the next step to understand how the school handles student support, behavior, and enrichment. For a family that values a neighborhood school with a stable pre-K-through-8 structure and a diverse, predominantly Hispanic community, Oliver Street is a straightforward option. For a family prioritizing math and science outcomes in the upper grades, it would require a closer look at what the school offers and what alternatives exist within Newark’s system of school choice at the middle-school level.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 342%

School 42% · District 28% · ▲ 14 pts above district

▼ 8 pts below state median · ▲ 3 pts above county median

Grade 447%

School 47% · District 23% · ▲ 23 pts above district

▲ 1 pts above state median · ▲ 8 pts above county median

Grade 543%

School 43% · District 22% · ▲ 21 pts above district

▲ 1 pts above state median · ▲ 12 pts above county median

Grade 641%

School 41% · District 18% · ▲ 24 pts above district

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

Grade 740%

School 40% · District 21% · ▲ 19 pts above district

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

Grade 87%

School 7% · District 12% · ▼ 5 pts below district

▼ 10 pts below state median · ▼ 5 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 343%

School 43% · District 28% · ▲ 15 pts above district

▼ 3 pts below state median · ▲ 2 pts above county median

Grade 453%

School 53% · District 30% · ▲ 23 pts above district

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

Grade 549%

School 49% · District 31% · ▲ 19 pts above district

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

Grade 653%

School 53% · District 36% · ▲ 17 pts above district

▼ 1 pts below state median · ▲ 3 pts above county median

Grade 761%

School 61% · District 38% · ▲ 23 pts above district

▲ 3 pts above state median · ▲ 11 pts above county median

Grade 851%

School 51% · District 39% · ▲ 12 pts above district

▼ 7 pts below state median · ▲ 2 pts above county median

Science

Grade 518%

School 18% · District 10% · ▲ 7 pts above district

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

Grade 84%

School 4% · District 6% · ▼ 2 pts below district

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

This schoolNewark Public 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 3Lower-income41%Higher-income50%9 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income52%Higher-income61%9 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income47%Higher-income64%18 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income51%Higher-income64%13 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income57%Higher-income86%29 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income39%Higher-income62%23 pp gap

Grade 4Lower-income46%Higher-income50%4 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income41%Higher-income57%16 pp gap

Grade 6Lower-income41%Higher-income43%2 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income36%Higher-income67%31 pp gap