Riverdale School, Riverdale NJ - Test Scores & Data

Original Research by School Decision on Riverdale School

Riverdale School is the sole campus of the Riverdale School District, a public regular school serving pre-kindergarten through eighth grade in the Morris County borough of Riverdale. Because the district contains only this one school, every local public school student from preschool through middle school attends the same building. For high school, families must look elsewhere, typically to a regional sending arrangement with a neighboring district, though the data does not specify which.

The school is small for a PK-8 building, with an enrollment that is predominantly white while also including a notable share of Hispanic students and smaller groups of Asian, Black, multiracial, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander students. About one in seven students qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, a rate well below the national average and an indicator of a relatively affluent student body overall. The school environment and access data—covering discipline, course offerings, staffing ratios, and chronic absenteeism—were not available in the reporting used here, so a parent interested in those areas would want to ask the school directly.

State test results on the New Jersey Student Learning Assessment present a mixed picture. In English language arts, the school generally performs well across most tested grades, with particularly strong results in fifth and eighth grades, where a large majority of students met the state’s proficiency standard. Third, fourth, and seventh grades also show solidly above-average results, while sixth grade dips to just over half proficient. In math, the pattern is more uneven. Third and fifth graders post strong proficiency rates, but fourth grade drops to about two in five students proficient, and the middle grades show a steep decline. Sixth grade proficiency falls below one in four, seventh grade hovers near one in three, and eighth grade lands at roughly one in six students meeting the bar. Science results are tested in fifth and eighth grades, with fewer than half of fifth graders and only a third of eighth graders reaching proficiency.

When placed alongside other districts in Morris County, Riverdale School’s overall proficiency across all tested subjects and grades sits below the midpoint of the county’s forty-two districts. This comparison reinforces what the grade-level data suggests: the school’s early-elementary literacy and math work well, but middle-grades math is a soft spot relative to peers. Because the school ends at eighth grade, there is no graduation rate to report.

The housing market in the Riverdale area reflects the same affluence seen in the school’s demographics. Home values are markedly above national and state medians, and rents are high. County-level real estate data shows a market with strong demand, a tight supply, and a median listing price well above what a typical national household could afford. The combination of a single-school district, modest enrollment, and premium housing costs means that Riverdale School draws from a small, relatively stable community with limited turnover.

Recent district-level changes were searched but little of lasting impact was found. No major budget initiatives, curriculum overhauls, or facility bond measures surfaced in the public record. For parents considering this school, the central academic takeaway is that the early grades deliver solid literacy and math results, but the math decline in the upper grades is a real issue that warrants a conversation with the school about how it supports students transitioning into middle school mathematics and how it prepares eighth graders for the rigors of high school coursework elsewhere.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 370%

School 70% · District 70%

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

Grade 441%

School 41% · District 41%

▼ 5 pts below state median · ▼ 24 pts below county median

Grade 575%

School 75% · District 75%

▲ 32 pts above state median · ▲ 9 pts above county median

Grade 623%

School 23% · District 23%

▼ 11 pts below state median · ▼ 32 pts below county median

Grade 731%

School 31% · District 31%

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

Grade 815%

School 15% · District 15%

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

English language arts

Grade 363%

School 63% · District 63%

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

Grade 464%

School 64% · District 64%

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

Grade 575%

School 75% · District 75%

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

Grade 654%

School 54% · District 54%

even with state median · ▼ 18 pts below county median

Grade 763%

School 63% · District 63%

▲ 5 pts above state median · ▼ 14 pts below county median

Grade 880%

School 80% · District 80%

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

Science

Grade 546%

School 46% · District 46%

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

Grade 833%

School 33% · District 33%

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

This schoolRiverdale 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.