Two Union County Vo-Tech Schools Make NJ Monthly's 'Top Vocational High Schools' List

Union County Magnet vocational school tied for third on New Jersey Monthly’s 2014 “Top Vocational Schools” list while Academy for Information Technology came in at number six.

New Jersey Monthly publishes the list every year along side their ”Top Public High Schools” list based on data compiled by Leflein Associates, an independent research company in Ringwood, New Jersey, according to a press release from the magazine.

This years rankings are based off data from the 2012-2013 school year.

The release said for vocational schools, “The list reflects the emergence of a new generation of vocational schools that focus on STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math).”

Certain factors are taken into account when configuring the list such as student to teach ratio, standardized test score rankings, and graduation rates.

Two new aspects were also looked at for this years public school rankings. The results took into account those students who scored a 1,550 or higher on their SAT’s as well as “post-secondary enrollment” percentages- the amount of students who enrolled in a college within 16 months of graduating high school.

“We specifically added these new data points to our scoring system to help identify the high schools that are doing the best job in preparing their students for success at the college level,” says New Jersey Monthly editor Ken Schlager said in the release.

The list of top 100 public high schools in New Jersey will appear in the magazines September issue while the full list of of all 339 schools rated will be available on New Jersey Monthly’s website on September 2.