Upper Dublin: The Making of a 21st Century Suburb ← All Chapters

The School Ratings Issue

During the early 2000s, various publications began to rank local schools, in part fostered by President George W. Bush’s successful advocacy for “No Child Left Behind.” As the public became more focused on educational quality and the property taxes providing funding for public education, various services, stirred by realtors and others with a vested interest in promoting a community, often ballyhooed school districts having the highest rated schools.83 Although the “ratings war” has abated to some extent in recent years, it periodically remains a focus of interest, particularly for parents considering a new locale and sometimes in competitive school board director campaigns. Parents voice concern about Upper Dublin District ranking,” The Repporteronline, (Oct. 10, 2016) (parent raising issue of taxes and higher ranking of Wissahickon School District).

At present there are at least nine different sites rating public schools: BEST, Great Schools, Neighborhood Scout, Niche, Public School Review, School Digger.com, USA.com and U.S. News & World Reports; Pittsburgh Business Times.84 An example of these ratings follows:

BEST Elementary Schools ranks 102,451 pre-K, elementary and middle schools “to find the right fit for you”

Fort Washington Elementary School as #1 in the Upper Dublin School District, #----- among Pennsylvania elementary Schools

Jarrettown Elementary School as #2 in the Upper Dublin School District and #80 among Pennsylvania elementary schools

(Thomas) Fitzwater Elementary School as #3-4 in the Upper Dublin School District and #220 among Pennsylvania elementary schools

Maple Glen Elementary School as #3-4 in the Upper Dublin School District and #243 among Pennsylvania elementary schools

As to the high school, the ratings are equally “precise” in a field dependent upon assigning numbers to qualities that lack consistent definition. See Judith Heinze, Upper Dublin High School Named 27th Best in PA, Patch (April 23, 2024) (citing US News & World Report rating) (high school rated by US News & World Report as 99th in United States, and trailing only Harriton, Lower Merion & Wissahickon high schools in Montgomery County); see also; Schooldigger’s rating the high school 36 of 1534; Great School’s awarding a 4.4, rating it as 8th best; and, finally, and, perhaps, conclusively, Niche’s rating the high school as 46th among 683 public high schools and giving it an “A.”85

Effectively, these ratings services mostly reflect the socio-economics of the community and the educational level of the parents and, where applicable, the selective admissions practices of alternative schools within or near a district. They may reflect the existence of quality technical and vocational education at Eastern Monto Vo-tech, parochial, private, charter and homeschooling school alternatives available in its geographical area.86 The expanded availability of publicly-paid school busing in the 1960s has further made comparative analysis subject to challenge. Although some districts and parents sometimes hype slight differences in one rating service’s numbers for the Upper Dublin School District (especially compared to nearby districts, such as Horsham, North Penn and Wissahickon), overall these ratings rate Upper Dublin’s schools highly on their various evaluation schemes (some of which are highly subjective) and, as a result, it is not surprising that nearby districts with similar socioeconomic composition have comparable ratings.

OBJECTIVE MEANS OF RATING UPPER DUBLIN’S SCHOOL DISTRICT

In February 2025 Children First, a statewide organization focusing on supporting public education, issued “A Children First Report on Montgomery County: A Decade of Stallled Progress: Opportunity Stunted for Children in Montgomery County.” In that report concentrating on the disadvantages suffered by children in underfunded school districts, the following statistics appeared providing comparative references to Upper Dublin’s school district:

*Highest current expenditure per adjusted ADM [average daily membership-basically student attendance]- Methacton, Upper Merion, Colonial, Horsham, Cheltenham, Lower Merion, Upper Dublin (p. 21)

*Concentration of low-income families: lowest five: Upper Dublin, Lower Moreland, Springfield, Methacton, Lower Merion (p. 20)

*Lowest concentration of Black, Hispanic, Asian and Multi-Racial Students: Upper Perkiomen, Perkiomen Valley, Souderton Area, Upper Dublin (p. 19)

*Highest percentage of third graders reading proficiently (ELA proficiency): Colonial, Jenkintown, Lower Merion, Upper Dublin (p. 17)

*Highest percentage of eighth graders with math proficiency: Lower Merion, Lower Moreland, Colonial Springfield, Upper Dublin (p. 18)

*Most experienced teacher workforce, with average of at least 17 years of experience: Jenkintown, Lower Merion, Upper Dublin (p. 23).

Notes

  1. 83.Whether family income and housing prices are more indicative of school ratings than educational value is unclear. Ryan Eastep, Understanding the Effects of Income on Housing Prices in the United States of America, (Georgia Institute of Technology, Dec. 10, 2021.
  2. 84.Dino Ciliberti, Upper Dublin School District Ranked Among PA’s Best: New Study, PATCH, May 27, 2025 (Pittsburgh Business Times).
  3. 85.Under the leadership of Dr. William Ritter, the high school was viewed as having excellent science education program. For over twenty years, during the 1970s through 1990s, Upper Dublin high school students were often selected as the gold medal winners at regional science fairs, leading to many students to competing in a national science competition. More recently, Ric Schmidt, another science teacher, has played a similar role. A school’s reputation in that realm may, just as an outstanding athletic program, draw parents to chose to locate in a particular school district. In the 1990s, Kobe Bryant was a star basketball player at Lower Merion High School, and the attention he drew (before his famed professional basketball career) drew attention to Lower Merion on a national basis. Obviously, talents like his are very unusual, and Upper Dublin’s athletic program, while successful, has not drawn equivalent attention to the district.
  4. 86.One notable example of this is Governor Joshua Shapiro who, while then residing in Upper Dublin, attended a high school in Lower Merion, Akiba Hebrew Academy (now known as Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy). Wikipedia. Also, Germantown Academy, universally regarded as a quality private school, is less than a mile from Upper Dublin’s western border.