About
How to read this site
Start with your address. The map centers there and tags the elementary and middle schools you’re zoned for. You can also search by school name or DBN.
Tap any number to see what it actually measures. Most of these labels hide a definition that changes the answer. “Economic Need Index” is not the poverty rate. “College ready” covers English only.
The scale under each number shows where that school sits among all NYC schools that year. The shaded middle is where half of them fall.
Hit ♥ to save a school, then compare up to five side by side. Your shortlist lives in a link you can send to anyone.
Where the numbers come from
All of it is public data directly from the city and state, and each row here links to the dataset it came from. The one thing calculated here is the percentile: where a school’s number falls against every other school’s that same year.
| Dataset | Feeds | Last published |
|---|---|---|
| LCGMS school directory | Core school records: DBN, name, address, lat/lon, grades, contacts | Refreshed weekly |
| Demographic Snapshot | Enrollment, demographics, Economic Need Index | 2024-25 |
| School Quality Reports (EMS & HS) | Survey summaries, achievement measures, attendance rates | 2023-24 |
| Average Class Size by School | Class size | 2025-26 |
| NYC School Survey | Safety, teacher trust, family engagement | 2024-25 |
| NY State test results (ELA/Math) | ES/MS academic outcomes | 2024-25 |
| Graduation outcomes | HS grad rates, Regents, college readiness | 2024-25 |
| HS/MS/Pre-K directoriesHigh school · Middle school · Pre-K | Programs, admissions methods, AP/IB, sports, arts, accessibility | 2021 (Pre-K 2018) |
| School zone boundaries (ES/MS)Elementary · Middle | Zoned-school lookup | 2024-25 |
| Guidance Counselor & Social Worker Report | Counselor and social-worker staffing, students-per-counselor | 2025-26 |
| PA/PTA Financial Reporting (Local Law 171) | PTA funds raised, per student | 2024-25 |
| Fair Student Funding Report (Local Law 16) | Funding formula percentage, budget per student | 2024-25 |
| Students in Temporary Housing (Local Law 73) | Students in temporary housing | 2024-25 |
| School Staff Demographics (Local Law 226) | Teacher counts, teacher years at school | 2024-25 |
| Student Discipline Annual Report (Local Law 93) | Suspensions per 100 students | 2024-25 |
| Physical Education Report (Local Law 102) | PE class size, licensed PE teachers | 2024-25 |
| Annual Arts in Schools Report (Local Law 123) | Certified arts teachers by discipline, 8th-grade arts completion | 2023-24 |
| School Librarians & Library Access (Local Law 80) | Certified librarians, weekly library time (gr 7-8) | 2025-26 |
| PSAL Report (Local Law 120) | Students in PSAL sports (high schools) | 2024-25 |
| CTE Report (Local Law 114) | Career & technical education program chips | 2024-25 |
| Co-Location Report (Local Law 32) | Shares-a-building fact | 2024-25 |
How to read a number here
A range instead of a number. When a value reads “Below 5%,” that range is what the DOE published into its dataset.
Withheld for privacy. The DOE hides a value when the group it describes is small enough that publishing it would point at individual kids.
Not yet reported. That source hasn’t published the measure for that year. These datasets each run on their own schedule, so this is common, and it is not the school’s doing.
Every number wears its year. A school’s 2022 test score and its 2025 enrollment both sit on the same page. The year rides along with each one so you never have to work out which is which.
What to know
In New York City, just under a million kids are enrolled in approximately 1,900 different district and charter schools across the five boroughs. The city publishes a mountain of data on all of them: test scores, attendance, class size, what families say on the annual survey. Then it scatters that data across a dozen datasets that each update on their own schedule. Answering one plain question about one school means opening six spreadsheets.
The gaps between schools range widely. On the 2022-23 state reading test, 47% of students met standards at the median school. At the bottom tenth of schools it was 26%. At the top tenth, 77%.
Most of that range sits inside districts, not between them. In the typical community school district, the highest- and lowest-scoring school are about 60 points apart.
That’s why you won’t find any “grades” here. In District 30 in Queens the range runs from 14% to 98%. At the school on the bottom, 95% of students were still learning English. At the two on top, 3% and 4%. Both numbers are accurate. Averaging them into a ranking would tell you nothing true about either school.
Parent fundraising is its own gap. In 2024-25, among the 1,207 schools whose parent association filed a financial report, the median PTA raised $8 per student. The top tenth raised more than $233 per student, and the highest raised more than $4,300. Two schools a few blocks apart can sit at opposite ends of that range. A school shown as not reported has a PTA that didn’t file, not necessarily no PTA, and a small number says nothing about how much a school’s families care.
Certified librarians are rare. 2025-26 is the first school year the city has published librarian staffing per school. The first report counts 273 full-time certified librarians across roughly 1,900 schools; 1,372 of the 1,609 locations in it have none. Weekly library time is rarer still: in most middle-grade schools, no 7th or 8th grader has scheduled weekly time with a licensed librarian. A zero on a school page is the citywide norm, not that school’s failing.
Half of the schools in the city’s arts report have no full-time certified music teacher. In 2023-24, the year that report covers, 433 of its 841 schools reported none, and dance and theater are scarcer still: about four schools in five have no certified teacher in either. Visual arts is the best-staffed discipline, and 115 schools reported no certified arts teacher in any of the four. A school without a certified full-time teacher may still teach music through part-time staff, classroom teachers, or arts partnerships the report doesn’t count, so a zero means no dedicated certified teacher, not no art. The report covers 845 schools and runs a year behind the rest of this site, so a school with no arts tiles isn’t hiding anything; the DOE’s file simply doesn’t include it. Where the state’s middle-school arts requirement is measured, most schools complete it for nearly every 8th grader, with a median of 100%, though in the bottom tenth of schools fewer than 83% of 8th graders get there.