Woodcliff Lake School District

The Woodcliff Lake School District has two schools serving prekindergarten through grade 8 in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey: Dorchester Elementary serves PK–5, and Woodcliff Middle serves grades 6–8. The most important finding is that both schools are well above state proficiency levels in every reported regular ELA, math, and science grade comparison in 2025–26; their smallest advantage was 16 points in science.

Woodcliff Middle had the strongest reported results: its 7th graders reached 94% proficiency in ELA, 38 points above the state, and 79% in math, 41 points above. Dorchester Elementary had the larger science advantage, with 5th graders at 46%, 19 points above the state; Woodcliff Middle’s 8th graders were the lower science result at 35%, but still 16 points above the state. SchoolDigger placed Dorchester at the 92nd percentile and Woodcliff Middle at the 97th percentile in 2025–26. Because the schools serve different tested grades, these results do not provide a same-grade head-to-head comparison.

Results are changing differently by subject: the middle school’s average math proficiency rose 9 points from 2024–25 to 2025–26, while elementary math was essentially flat; science fell 6 points at Dorchester and 3 points at Woodcliff Middle. The average matched-grade math advantage grew from 29 to 33 points, while the science advantage narrowed from 21 to 18 points. ELA remains strong, though the average advantage narrowed from 32 to 31 points, including a 16-point drop in Dorchester’s 4th-grade result. As context, in 2024–25, free/reduced lunch eligible students were 1% at Dorchester and 2% at Woodcliff Middle; student-teacher ratios were 9.4 and 8.8, respectively. Chronic absenteeism was 3% and 5%, compared with 14% statewide.