Downtown Public School Achievement Metrics Surpass City-Wide Averages
Test score data for New York public school students in the academic year that ended last June show that Lower Manhattan pupils are performing well above the average compared to New York City as a whole. In the annual statewide exams in math and English Language Arts (ELA), scores in Level 3 indicate proficiency, while Level 4 denotes “exceeds proficiency.”
On math tests, the local leader was P.S. 150 in the Financial District, where 94.1 percent students scored Level 3 or 4, down slightly from the prior academic year, when 95.7 percent fell into this category. At P.S. 89 (in Battery Park City), 93.5 percent scored in this range, unchanged from that school’s results in the 2023-2024 school year. At P.S. 234, in Tribeca, 86.5 percent of students were proficient or in excess of proficiency (a slight increase from 85.8 percent cohort last year). For the Battery Park City School (P.S./I.S. 276), 82.3 percent of kids scored in Level 3 or 4 (a marginal decline from 83.1 percent in 2023-2024). The Seaport neighborhood’s Spruce Street School placed 84.9 percent of students in the top two categories (down from 85.3 percent last year), while 60.8 percent of children at the Peck Slip School (also in the Seaport) landed at Level 3 and 4, a falloff from the corresponding metric of 74.3 percent the prior term.
On the ELA exams, P.S. 89 was the leader, with 95.9 percent of students in the two upper tranches, a significant jump from that school’s tally of 81 percent in 2023-2024. P.S. 150 was second, with 92.9 percent in Levels 3 and 4, down from 94.3 percent a year earlier. P.S. 234 students were proficient or above at a rate of 86 percent (up from 82 percent the prior year). The Spruce Street School put 85.5 percent of students in the top categories (slightly up from 85.2 percent 12 months earlier). At the Battery Park City School, 80.8 percent scored in Level 3 or 4 (up from 80.1 percent a year ago), and Peck Slip students qualified for proficient or above a the rate of 67.5 percent (down from 81 percent the prior term).
For context, the corresponding metrics for all New York City public school students are 56.9 percent in math and 56.3 percent in ELA.
These results were achieved while the six local schools cited here (which have combined budgets of $49,578,574) spent an average of $19,105 per pupil, which is $2,595 (or 12.4 percent) less than the City’s Department of Education (DOE) budgets for the average student throughout the five boroughs. Among the six elementary schools serving Lower Manhattan, only P.S. 89 exceeds the City-wide average of $21,825, spending $22,640 per child. The lowest spender among local schools is P.S. 150, which allocates $17,355 per student, according to DOE data.