The school was the 78th-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 68th in the state of 328 schools in 2012, after being ranked 116th in 2010 out of 322 schools listed. The magazine ranked the school 44th in 2008 out of 316 schools. The school was ranked 66th in the magazine's September 2006 issue, which included 316 schools across the state. Schooldigger.com ranked the school tied for 76th out of 381 public high schools statewide in its 2011 rankings which were based on the combined percentage of students classified as proficient or above proficient on the mathematics and language arts literacy components of the High School Proficiency Assessment.
History
Students from Midland Park attended Ridgewood High School until 1935, after which they started attending Pompton Lakes High School. Due to limitations on space, the Pompton Lakes School District mandated that the district's high school could not accommodate students from Midland Park after the end of the 1956-57 school year. Midland Park's voters approved a referendum in 1955 that led to the construction of a $1.4 million Midland Park High School that opened in September 1957. A 1973 plan to have students from Ho-Ho-Kus attend Midland Park High School as part of a regional agreement never came to fruition, despite official approval and encouragement by the New Jersey State Board of Education. Ridgewood had been hosting students in grades 9 to 12 from Ho-Ho-Kus for 75 years at Ridgewood High School as part of a sending/receiving relationship, though the board of education of the Ridgewood Public Schools decided to end the arrangement in 1973 due to overcrowding. A proposed regionalization agreement between Ho-Ho-Kus and Ridgewood had been rejected by voters from both communities in 1969. The state had recommended the formation of a regionalization agreement between Ho-Ho-Kus and Midland Park, though the choices of funding the combined district based on either property values or on the number of students would mean that one borough would shoulder higher costs than the other, regardless of which method was selected. Students from Ho-Ho-Kus attended the school through the 1990s, when the choice was made to shift students to Northern Highlands Regional High School.
Athletics
The Midland Park High School Panthers compete in Patriot Division B of the North Jersey Interscholastic Conference, made up of private and public high schools located in Bergen County, Hudson County and Passaic County, following a reorganization of sports leagues in Northern New Jersey by the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association. With 230 students in grades 10-12, the school was classified by the NJSIAA for the 2015-16 school year as North I, Group I for most athletic competition purposes, which included schools with an enrollment of 187 to 490 students in that grade range. Prior to the realignment that took effect in the fall of 2010, Midland Park was a member of the smaller Bergen-Passaic Scholastic League. The school participates in joint football and wrestling programs with Waldwick High School as the host school / lead agency, under an agreement that expires at the end of the 2018-19 school year. On November 9, 2007, the boys' soccer team defeated number 1 seed Wallington High School to claim the North I, Group I state sectional championship. The game was tied 1-1 at the end of regulation and was decided on penalty kicks by a 5-4 margin. On November 10, 2007, the girls' volleyball team lost to Bogota High School in the title match of the 27-team Group I tournament at William Paterson University by scores of 22-25, 25-18 and 25-13. In 2010, Junior javelin thrower Kaleb Zuidema set the New Jersey record with a throw of. Zuidema also went on to win the 2010 Penn Relays and won the High School Javelin National Championship. In the fall of 2010, the boys' soccer team lost in the finals of the North 1 Group 1 championship to Wallington 2-1. In the Bergen Record, the North Jersey Boys' Soccer Top 25 placed Midland Park at number 7 when the season had come to an end. That season the team also won the NJIC Patriot B Soccer Title.
Administration
The principal is Nicholas Capuano. His core administration team includes the vice principal and athletic director
Notable alumni
Alumni of the high school include:
Warren Farrell, educator, gender equality activist and author.
