The top reported proficiency rate is 80% in English language arts. The lowest is 35% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Union School
Union School is a regular public school in Rutherford, New Jersey, serving only seventh and eighth grade. As a standalone middle school within the Rutherford School District, it receives students from the borough's elementary schools and sends them on to Rutherford High School. Because it covers just two grade levels, its enrollment is compact, and its entire focus is on the transition years before high school.
The school's student body draws from a community that is predominantly white, with a substantial Hispanic population and a notable Asian share. The share of students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch is low, pointing to a generally middle- to upper-middle-income catchment. Rutherford itself is an inner-ring suburb of New York City, with a pedestrian-focused downtown, tree-lined streets, and good rail access to Manhattan. The borough has a mix of Victorian and Edwardian homes, a small commercial core, and institutional anchors such as Felician University and the Williams Center for the Arts. Population has grown modestly in recent decades, and the housing market is expensive, with high home values and rents that reflect the area's desirability and proximity to the city.
On state assessments, Union School shows clear strengths and some unevenness. In English language arts, both seventh and eighth graders perform well, with a large majority of students scoring at the proficient level or above. Seventh-grade math results are similarly strong. The picture shifts in eighth-grade math, where the proficiency rate drops substantially compared to seventh grade, and in eighth-grade science, where the rate is lower still. This pattern is common in middle schools as curriculum becomes more abstract, but a parent may want to look into this further with the school to understand how the math and science programs support students through that transition. The overall proficiency index across all tested subjects and grades places Union School above the midpoint among the school districts in Bergen County, meaning it performs somewhat better than the typical district in the county on this combined measure.
Because the school serves only grades seven and eight, there is no graduation rate to report. That metric simply does not apply here. Similarly, data on chronic absenteeism, discipline, and course access were not available in the material provided, so they are not part of this account. The school's website and district office would be the right places to ask about those.
Union School fits families who are looking for a focused middle school experience in a suburban setting with strong English language arts instruction and a solid start in seventh-grade math. The drop in eighth-grade math and the modest science results mean that a parent who values very high performance across all subjects in those later middle school years may want to investigate the school's support structures and instructional approaches in those areas. The community context of Rutherford, with its walkable downtown, easy train commute to Manhattan, and high-cost housing, shapes the peer environment and the kind of family that typically lives in the attendance zone. We looked for recent district initiatives such as referendum or bond measures that might affect the school, but found little publicly reported, so that topic is left out rather than guessed.
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