Summary:
The Fort Lee School District has one middle school, Lewis F. Cole Middle School, serving grades 5–8, with 1,227 students. In 2025–26, the school’s average proficiency was higher than the New Jersey average in English Language Arts (74% vs. 53%), Mathematics (57% vs. 37%) and Science (46% vs. 23%). The most important exception is grade 8 Mathematics: 21% were proficient at the school, compared with 23% statewide.
Because Lewis F. Cole is the only school in this list, there is no other local middle school to rank above or below it. Its strongest results were in ELA, where it exceeded the state in every grade by 19 to 23 percentage points, and in Algebra I and Geometry. Geometry proficiency was 100% for both the end-of-course result and grade 8, compared with 52% statewide for the end-of-course result and 86% in grade 8. Algebra I was also above the state: 87% vs. 40% for the end-of-course result, and 98% vs. 93% in grade 7. These course results stand apart from regular-grade Mathematics: grade 5 proficiency was 75% vs. 46% statewide and grade 6 was 78% vs. 40%, but grade 8 was below the state.
Recent results show mixed movement rather than a uniform rise or decline. From 2024–25 to 2025–26, the ELA average fell from 76% to 74%, while the school’s advantage over the state widened slightly, from 20.5 to 20.9 percentage points. Mathematics stayed about level at 57%, as the state average rose and the school’s advantage narrowed from 21 to 20 points; grade 8 Mathematics improved from 17% but remained below the state. SchoolDigger ranked Lewis F. Cole 97th of 743 schools in 2025–26, at the 87th percentile with four stars, compared with 118th of 752 and four stars in 2024–25. In 2024–25, 25% of students were free/reduced lunch eligible; the student-teacher ratio was 12.5:1. With only one school in the list, these figures cannot show how it compares with other local middle schools.
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