In September 2017, Amazon announced its intention to establish a second corporate headquarters (known as “HQ2”) in North America, and issued a detailed request for proposals from interested cities or regions. The Newark Community Foundation (NCF), a division of the Community Foundation of New Jersey, retained Anderson Economic Group to analyze the total savings to Amazon resulting from these incentives. NCF also requested AEG to review the New Jersey public education system and benchmark the system against those of other states vying for HQ2.
We reviewed data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Database, and several national high school ranking publications in order to compare the New Jersey school system with that of other states that were attempting to attract HQ2. We found that New Jersey ranks in the top three states for a number of key secondary school metrics such as graduation rate, ACT and SAT scores, and pupil-to-teacher ratio.