MHS, congratulations for an abysmal performance...courtesy of the Morris County stupid taxpayers continuing like sheep to pay for mediocre performance with sky-high property taxes.

What are the "new and improved" excuses this time?

Ara:

If you think our property taxes are high, try moving to Union County or Westchester County.

Student test scores are used in the metrics to determine ranking. Some 40% of students at Morristown HS are minorities and/or recent first generation immigrants. Many of them can't even speak English that well. The diversity they bring is what makes Morristown HS superior to some lily white utopian schools in places like Madison and Mendham which do little to prepare childrent o the realities of th eworld outside of suburbia, Comparing our scores with those of Madison is like comparing apples to oranges because of this fundemental difference in our demographic makeup.

Instead of complaining about your property taxes you should put your efforts into helping the immigrant community of Morristown to assimilate and strive in our system.

Thank you David! I completely agree and am tired of MHS getting a bad wrap bc people accept the test scores without really understanding how ineffective a tool it is for evaluating the quality of education.

I'm not sure why Madison HS deserves your criticism David. As a Morristown resident and Madison HS teacher...I will inform you that Madison has a fairly significant hispanic population, not comparable to Morristown but way higher than many of the other schools in the top ten.

While MHS is ranked within 23rd percentile, would have hoped to see an increase in the rankings this year as opposed to sliding down the list. It seems to me that there is an acceptance here and not a continual focus on improvement on behalf of
teachers and administration. I do not yet have children in the Morris county school district system but continue to monitor rankings to determine whether to take public or private school route. Would appreciate some input from current students or parents on whether there is enough focus and desire to improve, or is MHS ok with being simply an above average school.

As David said, the ranking is based in part on test scores and with a high immigrant population, the district may suffer in the ranking, but when scores are compared apples to apples by demographic, MHS students far exceed those in neighboring communities. The school is great and its graduates go on to top colleges and universities. What we need to do is score Ara, who ranks #1 on the list of NJ's most angry taxpayers. If Ara and his wife Helene did more for our community than attend meetings to complain about everything and criticize our schools and community, maybe they would do some good and bring about positive change. Got a better idea, if the Barsamian's are so unhappy here, maybe they should move! Don't let the door hit you on the way out!

Excuses, excuses!

Usually folks who complain about high property taxes blame schools/teachers, however if you look at your property tax bill, only one portion of it = schools, the rest = your town and county taxes, yet town/county are not capped and you are not allowed to vote directly on those budgets. How is that fair? If Ara and other "anti-tax" folks really want to get their money's worth, then push for county budgets to be made available and voted on just like schools. PS- every dollar of taxes put into schools helps your property value/local home sales, not so for county taxes, so when you vote a school budget down, you are voting your own property's attractiveness to buyers down.

Meghan--these rankings mean little to nothing in a school district as diverse as the MS district. If you could compare MHS by demographic groups, there is no doubt that we would equal or top our less diverse neighbors. Unfortunately, that is not how these rankings work. There are amazing students at MHS, students who are at the very top of all students in the US, students who preform in local, state or regional bands and choruses, AP national Scholars, Merit Scholars, Google award finalists, Math and Science teams who consistently beat Mendham, Madison, Chatham and even Milburn in local and state tournaments, students who are in the top 10% of all science students in the state, A forensics team which participates in the Harvard Speech and Debate tournament each year..and on and on. BTW, except for the fact that I have a rising senior I am in no way affiliated with the high school.
Mark (hello neighbor--LOL!), while Madison may have a somewhat significant hispanic population, My guess would be that the hispanic population in Madison is likely to be a bit more affluent and more likely to have a parent who speaks english. I would also guess that Madison has a considerably smaller population of free/reduced lunch students and/or homeless students. I would also imagine that Madison has a higher population of both Asian and Indian students, not to mention a small but significant population of students who are children of professors at any of the 3 colleges located in Madison.

I agree with all of those posters above who have defended the success of Morristown HS. As a township resident, I am very happy with the quality of the schools here and I agree that the #75 ranking is respectable given Morristown's demographics.

However, I still have to object to the characterization of Madison HS as being an affluent white school district. Yes...Madison has its share of affluent folks, just like Morristown does.

Jayme....there are a large number of Hispanic students in Madison who were not born in this country and/or their parents do not speak English. There are lots of students on the free/reduced lunch plan. I have plenty of students in my classes that don't do homework because they work during the hours that they are not in school.

Again...I'm not trying to compare Madison to Morristown. It just hasn't been characterized correcty in these comments.