Nicholas Murray Butler Academy School No. 23

Nicholas Murray Butler Academy School No. 23 serves 667 students in kindergarten through grade 8 in Elizabeth, within Elizabeth Public Schools. Its biggest concern is low achievement across both core subjects: its 2025–26 averages were 20% proficient in ELA and 15% in math, the lowest among the ten comparable nearby schools.

Results were also well below district and state averages. ELA proficiency averaged 20% across grades 3–8, compared with 35% for the district and 51% for the state; math averaged 15% across grades 3–7, versus 31% and 44%. Nearby-school averages were 30% in ELA and 28% in math. Fifth-grade math stands out as especially weak: 3% were proficient, compared with 29% at nearby schools, 33% districtwide and 46% statewide. Algebra I is a relative bright spot: the end-of-course result was 19.5%, close to the nearby average of 20.1%, though below the district’s 22% and the state’s 40%. Chronic absenteeism is another positive: 13% in 2024–25, below the district’s 14% and the state’s 14%.

Over the four years from 2022–23 to 2025–26, ELA declined from 24% to 20%, while math rose from 9% to 15% and Algebra I improved from 10% to 20%; the gains have not closed the large state gaps in core subjects. SchoolDigger gives the school a 6th-percentile rating and 0 stars for 2025–26, ranking it 1,249th of 1,331 statewide; its percentile was 6 in 2024–25 and 7 in 2023–24. The 2024–25 student-teacher ratio was 12.0:1, below the nearby-school average of 12.6:1. In that same year, 84.1% of students were free/reduced lunch eligible, nearly the nearby average of 84.2%. SchoolDigger’s statewide school-effectiveness rating was higher for African American students, at the 25th percentile, than for the school overall, at the 6th; its Special Education Students rating fell from the 25th percentile in 2023–24 to the 6th in 2025–26.