Harrison Elementary School landed at No. 7 and Mount Pleasant Elementary School at No. 21 on U.S. News & World Report's 2027 list of New Jersey's best public elementary schools.

The rankings, reported by NorthJersey.com on Tuesday, Oct. 20, placed Harrison in the top 10 statewide. Mount Pleasant also made the top 25, giving Livingston two schools on the list.

Livingston was not the only municipality to place two schools. Millburn had South Mountain School at No. 17 and Wyoming School at No. 23. Ridgewood placed Orchard Elementary at No. 10 and Somerville Elementary at No. 20. Glenwood School in Short Hills ranked third overall.

School 28 in Paterson topped the statewide list.

Livingston also showed up in the middle school rankings. Mount Pleasant Middle School ranked No. 16 among New Jersey's best public middle schools, according to NorthJersey.com.

U.S. News updated its methodology for the 2027 edition. Researchers incorporated data from state education agencies, collected by RTI International, for the first time. That allowed the analysis to assess student performance across all proficiency levels in reading and math, not just whether students passed, according to Patch.

"By incorporating direct state data across all proficiency levels, the 2027 rankings offer a richer, more complete picture of how elementary and middle schools are driving student growth," Eric Brooks, U.S. News director of education data analysis, said in a news release.

Half of each school's score reflects student proficiency in math and reading. The other half measures how a school performs compared with expectations based on students' socioeconomic backgrounds, according to MyCentralJersey.com. The test data comes from the 2023-24 school year.

The rankings cover public elementary schools offering pre-K through fifth or sixth grade. Charter schools are ranked separately. U.S. News evaluated more than 46,000 elementary schools nationally.

Livingston Superintendent Mark Stern, who took over the district on July 1, has not publicly commented on the rankings. The Livingston Board of Education's Harrison Elementary is listed under the Livingston Board of Education School District in the U.S. News rankings.