Young Men's Academy, Paterson NJ

Original Research by School Decision on Young Men's Academy

Young Men’s Academy is a regular public school in Paterson, New Jersey, serving grades three through eight. It is a single-gender school, as the name suggests, though the district’s overall system is coeducational. The school sits within the Paterson Public School District, an urban district that covers New Jersey’s third-largest city. Paterson itself is a dense, historically industrial city with a strong immigrant presence, a high poverty rate, and a mix of residential neighborhoods, commercial corridors, and remnant manufacturing. The city has slowly grown in recent years after decades of decline, and development efforts center on adapting historic mill buildings and leveraging the Great Falls National Historical Park as a cultural anchor.

Young Men’s Academy is small, with a total enrollment that spans a narrow grade band. The student body is overwhelmingly Black and Hispanic, with no representation from other racial or ethnic groups reported. A substantial majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, reflecting the economic realities of the surrounding community.

State testing data from the New Jersey Student Learning Assessments is available for math, English language arts, and science across several grade levels, but some results are suppressed, which often occurs when the number of tested students is very small. For the grades where data is reported, proficiency rates are low. In fourth grade, about a third of students scored proficient or above in both math and ELA. By fifth grade, that share dropped to a very small percentage in ELA and to none in math. Seventh grade showed a modest improvement in ELA, where roughly a third reached proficiency, but math remained very low. In science, fifth-grade proficiency was also low. Compared with other districts in Passaic County, Young Men’s Academy’s overall proficiency across tested subjects and grades falls in the bottom quarter. Because the school ends at eighth grade, there is no graduation rate to report.

The school does not serve high school grades, so course access data, including Advanced Placement, dual credit, or career pathways, does not apply. Information on discipline, staffing, attendance, and English learner or special education populations was not available in the data provided.

Housing costs in Paterson’s zip code are broadly in line with the county market, with home values and rents that reflect the area’s affordability pressures and modest appreciation. The county has seen an increase in active listings and a slight uptick in median listing prices, but the overall market remains active.

At the district level, Paterson Public Schools adopted a new five-year strategic plan in 2024 focused on student achievement and post-graduation readiness. In May 2025, the school board approved a budget that includes a tax levy increase at the maximum allowed under a state waiver, a change that directly affects property taxes for district residents. These district-wide developments may shape the resources and priorities at Young Men’s Academy in the coming years, but no specific school-level initiatives were detailed in the available information.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 430%

School 30% · District 20% · ▲ 10 pts above district

▼ 16 pts below state median · ▼ 2 pts below county median

Grade 50%

School 0% · District 15% · ▼ 15 pts below district

▼ 43 pts below state median · ▼ 26 pts below county median

Grade 78%

School 8% · District 14% · ▼ 6 pts below district

▼ 27 pts below state median · ▼ 12 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 430%

School 30% · District 27% · ▲ 3 pts above district

▼ 25 pts below state median · ▼ 14 pts below county median

Grade 510%

School 10% · District 24% · ▼ 14 pts below district

▼ 44 pts below state median · ▼ 28 pts below county median

Grade 731%

School 31% · District 30% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▼ 26 pts below state median · ▼ 13 pts below county median

Science

Grade 510%

School 10% · District 10%

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

This schoolPaterson 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.