VHS Named A Top STEM High School By Newsweek

Verona High School’s Engineering Club has tested its skills at several college catapult competitions in recent years.

Newsweek has released its 2020 ranking of the top 5,000 STEM high schools, and Verona High School has made the list at number 2,978. (There are about 37,100 public and private high schools in America.)

The top 5,000 schools were curated from research by STEM.org Educational with data from the second quarter of 2015 through the third quarter of this year. The purpose was to determine which primary/secondary institutions in America best offer students experiences in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)—as defined by the federal government’s Congressional Research Service—while preparing them for post‐secondary outcomes. Additional factors, including affluence and median household income, were taken into consideration in compiling the rankings.

Verona has significantly expanded its STEM curriculum in the last few years, at all grade levels. Elementary school students have shown off their STEM skills in presentations to the Board of Education and gone all-in for science events like Antarctica Week. Middle school students have gleefully embraced physics through catapult competitions and VHS students have beaten college students in catapult construction. VHS has added more classes to its computer science program and has exposed its students to some of the top college comp sci programs. Earlier this year, two members of the VHS Class of 2020 achieved perfect scores on their AP Computer Science tests. (Read all of MyVeronaNJ.com’s stories about STEM education in Verona here.)

“This recognition is a testament to our talented faculty dedicated to our students,” said Dr. Rui Dionisio, Verona’s superintendent of schools, in an email Tuesday. “Our district is committed to providing a variety of opportunities so that each child may attain his or her individual potential. With a highly committed school district and community we can ensure that all students become successful.”

Joshua Cogdill, VHS’ principal echoed that praise. “We are very proud of our Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics programming,” he said. “Our teachers engage our students in authentic and experiential lessons so that they may engage in the process of asking questions and identifying solutions to real-world problems.”

The top STEM high school in the country, according to Newsweek, is the School of Science and Engineering in Dallas, a college prep magnet school. New Jersey had 34  high schools in the top 500, including Bergen County Technical High School-Teterboro (#13), a public magnet school, and, closer to Verona, Millburn (#151), Newark Academy (#170), Summit (#190), Montclair Kimberley Academy (#326), and Glen Ridge (#466). Glen Ridge is one of the school districts that state education authorities consider a “comparable” district to Verona.  Among the others, Caldwell-West Caldwell district’s James Caldwell High School was ranked #3574, Kinnelon was #1736, Mahwah was #1280 and New Providence was #1163.

“We are proud of our commitment to STEM education across Verona Public Schools,” said Glen Stevenson, Verona’s supervisor of STEM. “The successes our students have in STEM is a testament to the dedication of all of our faculty beginning in Kindergarten and culminating at VHS.”