Piscataway High School is a four-year comprehensive community public high school serving students in ninth through twelfth grades from Piscataway in Middlesex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, operating as the lone secondary school of the Piscataway Township Schools. The school is accredited by the New Jersey Department of Education and has been accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Elementary and Secondary Schools since 1963. Piscataway Township High School is known for its football program; three former players were drafted in the first round of the National Football League draft in two years, the first time in history that such an event has occurred.
As of the 2021–22 school year, the school had an enrollment of 2,143 students and 154.4 classroom teachers (on an FTE basis), for a student–teacher ratio of 13.9:1. There were 538 students (25.1% of enrollment) eligible for free lunch and 212 (9.9% of students) eligible for reduced-cost lunch.
Awards, recognition and honors
The school has received the following notable awards and recognitions. Governor's School of Excellence, November 21, 2003 Best Practice Award, 2002-03 for Comfort Zone Best Practice Award, 2004-05 for Life Skills and Beyond Golden Achievement Award, 2004 Best Practice Award, 2005-06 for Senior Citizens Outreach Program & Exchange (SCOPE) Coalition of Essential Schools, 2005. First school in the state to be granted full membership. National AVID School Certified School, 2006 Amistad Fellow, 2006
Piscataway High School received an "A" and was ranked "above average to excellent" in a recent issue of Inside Jersey Magazine, a publication of The Star-Ledger. The article, entitled "New Jersey's Top Performing Public High Schools," rated schools throughout the state based on academic achievement and test score growth over a four-year period. Piscataway High School was one of only nine schools out of 27 in Middlesex County to be given an "A" rating. The school was the 144th-ranked public high school in New Jersey out of 339 schools statewide in New Jersey Monthly magazine's September 2014 cover story on the state's "Top Public High Schools", using a new ranking methodology. The school had been ranked 217th in the state of 328 schools in 2012, after being ranked 140th in 2010 out of 322 schools listed. The magazine ranked the school 146th in 2008 out of 316 schools. The school was ranked 177th in the magazine's September 2006 issue, which surveyed 316 schools across the state. Schooldigger.com ranked the school tied for 151st out of 381 public high schools statewide in its 2011 rankings (a decrease of 15 positions from the 2010 ranking) which were based on the combined percentage of students classified as proficient or above proficient on the mathematics (84.0%) and language arts literacy (93.0%) components of the High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA).
Curriculum
Advanced Placement (AP) courses are offered in AP English Language and Composition, AP English Literature and Composition, AP French Language, AP Statistics, AP Spanish Language, AP Calculus, AP Computer Science, AP Biology, AP Chemistry, AP Physics, AP United States Government and Politics, AP United States History, AP World History, AP Environmental Science, AP Psychology, AP Macroeconomics, AP Music Theory, and AP Studio Art.
Its radio station is WVPH, also known as 90.3, "The Pulse of Piscataway", with students broadcasting for an hour in the morning and three hours in the afternoon, while students from Rutgers University broadcast on the station during the other hours.
Notable legal cases
Two notable legal cases have originated at Piscataway High School.
New Jersey v. T. L. O.
An incident which occurred at the school in 1980 became a case that made it to the Supreme Court of the United States (in 1985).
On March 7, 1980, a 14-year-old freshman, identified in court documents only by the initials T. L. O., was caught by a teacher smoking in a bathroom with another girl at the high school. The teacher took both students to the Principal's Office where they met with Assistant Vice Principal Theodore Choplick. In a search of T. L. O.'s purse, Choplick observed a pack of cigarettes, and while removing the cigarettes he noticed a package of rolling papers, often closely tied to the use of marijuana. Choplick then began a more thorough search for the evidence of drugs, which revealed a small amount of marijuana, a pipe, empty plastic bags, a large quantity of money in $1 bills, an index card that appeared to list students who owed T. L. O. money, and two letters that implicated T. L. O. in being a drug dealer.