Pohatcong Township School, Phillipsburg NJ

Original Research by School Decision on Pohatcong Township School

Pohatcong Township School is a regular public school serving students from prekindergarten through eighth grade. It is the sole school in the Pohatcong Township School District, located on Route 519 in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. The school draws its students from Pohatcong Township, a largely rural community that uses a Phillipsburg mailing address but is separate from the Phillipsburg School District.

The town of Phillipsburg, by contrast, is a small historic municipality on the Delaware River in Warren County. It blends residential neighborhoods with a commercial core along Main Street and Union Square and retains an industrial heritage tied to the Morris Canal and railroad era. The town’s population has seen slow, modest growth in recent years, and an Urban Enterprise Zone covers portions of the community to encourage commerce. Housing in the broader county market shows moderate demand. Home values and rents in the area sit below the state average, and the county has a mix of older homes and some newer listings, though no major new housing developments were identified in publicly available sources.

Enrollment at Pohatcong Township School is small, with roughly three hundred students spread across grades PK through eight. The student body is predominantly white, with a modest share of Hispanic students and a smaller Black population. About one in five students qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, a rate that is lower than in many nearby districts. Data on students with disabilities and English learners were not reported in the available records, so a parent may want to ask the school about those populations directly.

State testing results are available from the New Jersey Student Learning Assessment for grades three through eight in math and English language arts, and for grades five and eight in science. Performance across tested subjects and grades is uneven. In math, proficiency rates varied substantially from one grade to the next; fourth grade was the strongest, while eighth grade had a very low proficiency rate. English language arts showed a clearer pattern: the lower grades posted mixed results, but by seventh and eighth grade a majority of students scored proficient or above. Science results were lower across the board. Overall, when all tested subjects and grades are combined into a single proficiency index, the school falls in the bottom quarter relative to other school districts in Warren County. A parent moving into the area may want to explore how the school supports students in the subjects where performance is weakest, and whether any targeted interventions or enrichment programs are in place.

Because the school ends at eighth grade, there is no high school graduation rate to report. Students from Pohatcong Township typically move on to a high school in a neighboring district. The district brief showed little publicly reported news of recent budget, curriculum, or facility changes, so families should plan to speak directly with the school about current initiatives and priorities.

No data on course access, staffing ratios, discipline, or chronic absenteeism were available in the records reviewed. The school does not have a charter or magnet designation. Programs such as art, music, athletics, or after-school activities were not listed in the data provided.

For a family considering whether this school fits, the picture is of a small, rural elementary and middle school in a community with modest economic diversity and a predominantly white student body. Academic performance on state assessments is below the county average overall, though some individual grades, particularly in upper-grade English language arts, show stronger results. The setting is a slow-growth area with a historic downtown nearby, and housing is more affordable than in much of New Jersey. A parent should follow up with the school on student support services, special education and English learner programs, and any enrichment or extracurricular offerings to get a full sense of what the day-to-day experience would be like.

See more original research from School Decision →

Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 331%

School 31% · District 31%

▼ 19 pts below state median · ▼ 22 pts below county median

Grade 452%

School 52% · District 52%

▲ 6 pts above state median · ▲ 13 pts above county median

Grade 536%

School 36% · District 36%

▼ 7 pts below state median · ▼ 3 pts below county median

Grade 638%

School 38% · District 38%

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

Grade 736%

School 36% · District 36%

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

Grade 85%

School 5% · District 5%

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

English language arts

Grade 322%

School 22% · District 22%

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

Grade 441%

School 41% · District 41%

▼ 15 pts below state median · ▼ 7 pts below county median

Grade 536%

School 36% · District 36%

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

Grade 644%

School 44% · District 44%

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

Grade 761%

School 61% · District 61%

▲ 3 pts above state median · even with county median

Grade 863%

School 63% · District 63%

▲ 5 pts above state median · even with county median

Science

Grade 526%

School 26% · District 26%

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

Grade 817%

School 17% · District 17%

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

This schoolPohatcong 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 3Lower-income25%Higher-income21%4 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income50%Higher-income29%21 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income42%Higher-income74%32 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income17%Higher-income38%21 pp gap

Grade 5Lower-income30%Higher-income38%8 pp gap