Maplewood Middle School, Maplewood NJ

Original Research by School Decision on Maplewood Middle School

Maplewood Middle School serves grades six through eight in Maplewood, New Jersey, as part of the South Orange-Maplewood School District, a unified district spanning both municipalities. The school sits in a community that is an inner-ring suburban bedroom community of New York City, with a compact downtown featuring boutiques, art galleries, and restaurants, anchored by a train station and a park designed by the Olmsted Brothers. The town is described as diverse and family-friendly, and its housing market reflects the desirability: home values are very high, and rents are steep, making this a high-cost area for families.

Academically, the picture is mixed and strongly grade-dependent. In English language arts, students perform well at every grade level, with a clear majority meeting or exceeding state standards in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. That consistency is a real strength. Math tells a different story. Sixth graders reach proficiency at a rate that is around the midpoint for New Jersey, but by seventh grade that figure drops substantially, and by eighth grade it falls further to a very low level. A parent moving into the district may want to look into this pattern further with the school, particularly how math instruction and support are structured across the middle years. On the eighth-grade science assessment, about one-third of students were proficient. Overall, taking all tested subjects together, the school’s proficiency index sits above the midpoint among districts in Essex County.

The student body is diverse. Just over half of students are white, about a quarter are Black, and the remainder are Hispanic, multiracial, or Asian. Less than a fifth of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which is a lower share than many districts in the state. The school is of moderate size for a three-grade middle school, and enrollment is fairly even across the three grades. Data on special education and English learner populations was not reported, nor were attendance or discipline metrics, so those dimensions are not possible to characterize here.

Because this is a middle school, there is no graduation rate to report, and indicators like advanced coursework or career pathways typically associated with high schools do not apply. The district context matters for families considering Maplewood Middle. The South Orange-Maplewood district launched an Intentional Integration Initiative that redrew elementary school attendance zones and buses students across neighborhoods so that each elementary school reflects the district’s overall socioeconomic mix. That policy was challenged in court and settled, and it remains in effect. It means that for families with younger children, elementary school assignment is not simply a function of address. Voters rejected a school facilities bond referendum in late 2022, so major renovations planned at that time did not go forward. Since then, the district has focused on essential maintenance and targeted improvements rather than large-scale construction. The district has also passed budgets with notable tax levy increases in consecutive years, a factor that adds to the already high cost of living in this town.

Maplewood Middle sits within a well-regarded district, in a community with strong transit connections to New York City and a lively downtown. The school delivers solid English language arts results, but its math outcomes, particularly in the upper grades, are a soft spot that a family would want to understand in more detail before enrolling.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 657%

School 57% · District 60% · ▼ 3 pts below district

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

Grade 720%

School 20% · District 26% · ▼ 6 pts below district

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

Grade 87%

School 7% · District 5% · ▲ 2 pts above district

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

English language arts

Grade 667%

School 67% · District 71% · ▼ 4 pts below district

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

Grade 767%

School 67% · District 71% · ▼ 3 pts below district

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

Grade 871%

School 71% · District 68% · ▲ 4 pts above district

▲ 13 pts above state median · ▲ 23 pts above county median

Science

Grade 832%

School 32% · District 34% · ▼ 2 pts below district

▲ 19 pts above state median · ▲ 26 pts above county median

This schoolSouth Orange-Maplewood 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 6Lower-income33%Higher-income73%40 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income28%Higher-income77%49 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income37%Higher-income78%41 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 6Lower-income29%Higher-income62%34 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income2%Higher-income30%28 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income0%Higher-income13%13 pp gap