Scarsdale and Edgemont Students Score High on SAT's

For those actively engaged in the debate over school budgets, here’s some new data about Scarsdale and Edgemont high schools. In a comparison of Westchester High Schools published by Westchester Magazine on February 27, 2012, Scarsdale and Edgemont students come out on top for performance on the SAT’s, but the districts’ spending per pupil did not.

Of the 46 schools in the survey, which includes six schools in Yonkers, here are the mean SAT scores for the top five schools:

• Scarsdale 1935
• Horace Greeley Chappaqua 1904
• Edgemont 1887
• Bronxville 1866
• Blind Brook/Rye Brook 1842

However, in gross per-pupil spending, for the schools where data is available, Scarsdale comes out # 7 on the list at $26,688 per student, behind top-ranked districts such as Bronxville at $28,062 per pupil and Ardsley at $27,691. Edgemont is 15th on the list with the spending of $24,052 per pupil.

Another interesting fact quantified on the chart is the median household income in the high school’s zip code or village. That’s another category where Scarsdale came out #1, with a median household income of $237,135, followed by Chappaqua at $217,773 and Bedford at $207,426. Edgemont is eighth in that category with a median household income of $146,723.

For some schools, the report shows the percentage of teachers at the school with master’s degrees or PhD’s. According to the chart, 100% of Edgemont teachers and 97% of the teaching staff at SHS fall into that category.

And for those tracking average class size, according to the chart, the average class size at Scarsdale High School was 21 students, with an average of  20 students per class in Edgemont putting both high schools among the schools with the fewest students per class.

You can parse the numbers however you like with this clickable chart that sorts the districts by sixteen sortable characteristics.