Livingston Officials Respond: 'Best High Schools' List Is Incomplete

Did Livingston High School get a fair shake in Newsweek’s highly read, recently released report, “America’s Top High Schools for 2015?”

Parents of students in the Livingston school district may have been surprised to see that Livingston High didn’t place on Newsweek’s list of the 500 “best” high schools in the nation, although its neighbor, Millburn High School, ranked #13 on the list.

• See related article: ‘Best High Schools’ List: Did Livingston Make The Cut?

But according to Livingston school administrators, there’s a reason why LHS got left off the list… Newsweek never reached out to them for the data.

Shortly following the release of the publication’s annual effort, Livingston school administrators published the following statement online:

“Livingston Public Schools is disappointed that Newsweek did not have the appropriate data from Livingston High School to include LHS in their annual listing of America’s Top High Schools. Traditionally LHS is annually listed high among the high schools; in 2014 LHS ranked No. 9 in the state of New Jersey. Unfortunately we have no record of receiving the request for data that Newsweek indicates was sent to the district. We are sorry we weren’t included in the research. We are confident our data would have placed us well among the top high schools in New Jersey and nation.”

Recently, Livingston’s schools ranked well on multiple other “best of” lists, including rating #142 in Newsweek’s 2013 “Best High Schools” report:

• Livingston High Moves Up in Newsweek Rankings
• When Experts Agree: Livingston High School Makes Another ‘Best Of’ List

• Report: Livingston High School Has Some of the ‘Best Teachers in America’
• Report: Livingston High Schools Rank Among the Nation’s ‘Most Challenging’
• Livingston School District Ranked in Top 20 Best in New Jersey

Send Livingston news tips and press releases to eric.kiefer@patch.com