South Orange-Maplewood School District

South Orange-Maplewood School District has nine schools serving kindergarten through grade 12: six elementary schools, two middle schools and one high school. Overall, elementary results are generally above state levels, and middle-school ELA is strong, but performance varies considerably by school and subject. The clearest concern is middle-school math in grades 7 and 8: both middle schools score below the state in grade 7 (28% and 33%, versus 38%) and grade 8 (9% and 10%, versus 23%); Columbia High School also trails the state on its listed Algebra and Geometry results.

Tuscan Elementary stands out for ELA, leading grade 3 at 78% and grade 4 at 83%; Marshall Elementary has the strongest grade 5 results, leading ELA at 95%, math at 83% and science at 72%. Its science result is 44 points above the state. Differences among elementary schools are substantial: grade 4 math spans 31 points, from Tuscan’s 73% to Delia Bolden Elementary’s 42%, while grade 5 science spans 32 points. At the middle level, South Orange Middle leads in most comparisons, though Maplewood Middle narrowly leads grade 7 ELA.

Recent changes are mixed: the average across comparable elementary results rose about 1 point in ELA and 2 points in math from 2024–2025 to 2025–2026, while middle-school ELA rose about 6 points and middle-school science fell about 3. SchoolDigger’s statewide percentile rankings also moved in different directions: Seth Boyden Elementary Demonstration School rose from 52 to 75, Delia Bolden Elementary fell from 85 to 71, and Tuscan rose from 87 to 95; these are rankings, not proficiency scores. As context, Marshall and Delia Bolden both reported 9% free/reduced lunch eligible in 2024–2025, yet their grade 5 results differed by 23 points in ELA and 27 in math. Year-to-year results reflect different groups of students, not the progress of the same students.