Niche School Rankings: See Toms River's Grades

TOMS RIVER, NJ — The annual Niche ratings have been released for more than 11,000 school districts across the country, including the Toms River Regional School District.

The education platform's 2023 Best Schools and Districts rankings looked at 11,820 school districts, and its rankings incorporate input from students, alumni and parents in addition to test scores, academic performance and quantitative data from sources such as the U.S. Department of Education to evaluate teachers, resources and facilities, according to the platform.

Niche incorporated nearly 2.5 million school reviews from students, parents and teachers — the largest online collection of school reviews, it said.

Schools and districts were graded on a range of factors from academics and teachers to facilities to the food.

The Toms River Regional Schools received an overall grade of B, with the following grades by category:

• Academics: B
• Diversity: B+
• Teachers: B
• College Prep: A-
• Clubs & Activities: B+
• Administration: B+
• Sports: A+
• Food: B-
• Resources & Facilities: C-

It was 20th out of 243 districts in New Jersey for athletics, 135th out of 376 districts for diversity, and 136th out of 243 districts overall. Each school in the district was graded as well; those grades can be found here.

The academics grade was based on state assessment proficiency, SAT/ACT scores, and survey responses on academics from students and parents, according to Niche; the test scores appear to be from the 2018-19 school year, reported by the U.S. Department of Education.

The facilities grade appears to reflect negative comments made by students in 2018 and before — which would precede the district's $147 million package of facilities repairs and upgrades.

"Lists and rankings from independent organizations like Niche help place a focus on education, and aim to give people an overall snapshot of a district’s capacity, and this is certainly a worthwhile and even a fun endeavor," said Toms River Regional Schools Superintendent Michael Citta.

"What we try and do here every day — get our kids ready for college and the real world, ensure the physical and social-emotional health of our students and staff, and promote and personify dignity and integrity through education — we do really well, particularly when you’re talking about a district of our size which has always maintained the small-town, personal feel of Toms River itself," he said.

The district "takes a tremendous amount of pride in the opportunities it offers our very large and very diverse student population," Citta said. "Our Niche report card is certainly respectable, commendable, and appreciated, but I also believe that the everyday successes and achievements of our students and staff transcend any ranking someone else might seek to give us."

Niche includes the following disclaimer: "Rankings are only published once a year and were most recently released on September 26, 2022. Due to the annual release, rankings and grades can become out-of-date as new facts and information become available. Such data will be incorporated into the next year’s rankings. Niche takes steps to ensure data integrity, but rankings may be inaccurate if Niche is supplied with inaccurate data from schools, data sources such as the US Department of Education, or spam and automated 'bot' reviews."

School rankings have their critics. In 2013, journalist and former professor and The Atlantic writer John Tierney argued that high school rankings are "nonsense."

"Parents might be able to use that information to find an affordable residence near good schools, while still leaving themselves within reasonable reach of their place of employment," Tierney wrote. "It's harder to fathom the logic for ranking high schools nationwide. Few are the families who will move out of state or across the country on the basis of claims about school quality."

The Best Schools rankings include categories for boarding, charter and magnet schools as well as schools for STEM and the arts among many others.

With reporting by Josh Bakan