That’s right: After six fun and interesting months helping to launch GothamSchools, I have decided to return to teaching.

I have learned so much from seeing the city’s schools from a new perspective. But whenever I visited a school as a reporter, I felt, deep down, that I really wanted to be teaching there. So I’ve very much looked forward to being back in the classroom, and my post yesterday about Citizen Schools will be my last here on GothamSchools.

I want to thank the team here who have made the site possible. I feel very comfortable leaving, knowing the blog is in the hands of top-notch reporters Elizabeth and Philissa. The biggest thank you, of course, goes to readers, for turning to the site for school news, for sending in tips, and for sparking conversation in the comments. Keep it up!

In anticipation of your questions, I’m taking over eighth-grade earth science at a charter school in Harlem, and no, I won’t be blogging about it. I suspect I won’t have a free moment not devoted to plate tectonics and topographic maps.

Citizen Schools, a decade-old organization that facilitates apprenticeships for students in almost 20 cities nationwide, set up shop at four middle schools this year, two each in Brooklyn and East Harlem. At each school, the organization is offering professional instruction, an after-school program, and classroom support, according to Nitzan Pelman, Citizen Schools’ New York City executive director.

The centerpiece of Citizen Schools’ programming is the apprenticeship, in which adult volunteers spend 12 weeks teaching students about a particular subject before the students present their work to a panel of experts on that subject. The presentations take place at an event called WOW!, named, Pelman told me, for the typical reaction of audience members.

In city schools this fall, apprenticeships offered instruction in dozens of subjects, including Celtic dancing, skateboarding, cooking, a documentary filmmaking. When I visited the Urban Assembly Academy for Arts and Letters in Brooklyn last month, I saw students rehearsing a group poem about expression and creativity, putting the finishing touches on memoirs they wrote with the help of journalists, and preparing to share what they had learned about the credit crisis.

At IS 45 in East Harlem, investment banker Gregory Mark Hill helped lead an apprenticeship titled “How to Make a Profit.” Hill said he started a foundation to support education, but because he views middle school as “an inflection point” in kids’ lives, he wanted to have a bigger impact.

“It’s one thing to write checks, attend black ties, and another thing to roll up your sleeves,” he told me.

Hill described working with students as a natural extension of his role teaching clients about investments.

But one of Citizen Schools’ major challenges is to prepare professionals, who often lack teaching experience, for the classroom. Pelman said all mentors participate in a 3-hour workshop where they set a goal for their students’ WOW! presentations and then work backwards to decide what they need to teach the students to prepare them.

Citizen Schools provides students more than just apprenticeships. The after-school program also includes help with homework, extra math and reading practice, field trips, and other activities such as sports. And volunteers and paid teaching fellows, usually freshly minted college graduates who want to explore a career in education, help out in classrooms throughout the day, ensuring continuity between academic instruction and Citizen Schools’ after-school program.

It’s one of Citizen Schools’ goals to encourage that kind of continuity, Pelman told me, adding that the four pilot schools in New York were chosen carefully from among dozens that applied in part because they were committed to integrating school-day and after-school programming.

The program charges $25,000 per school. Pelman said principals are usually able to use federal grant money for after-school programs to pay Citizen Schools, and she said the city Department of Education’s new middle school improvement grants could also enable needy schools to purchase the program. Citizen Schools plans to expand to one additional city school in the fall.

Today’s New York Times reported that Obama could oversee “the largest new federal initiative for young children since Head Start began in 1965″ if he makes good on his pledge of $10 billion for early childhood education, leaving proponents of such programs “atremble” in anticipation of his administration’s support.

More than 20,000 youngsters participated in the first Head Start programs in New York City in the summer of 1965, the Times reported that year. The full article is after the jump.

My students give up before the test prep reading is even handed to them. They already know what answer they are going to choose… without even reading the options (or the story). They have already mastered the fake reading… where they look blankly at the text and then, after a few moments, move on. No matter how many times we model, partner, attempt to hold students accountable with underlining and highlighting and written explanations of why the answer they chose are the best answer… it doesn’t follow through into testing. These students are completely capable of finding the most basic answers in the text, but they don’t care. It’s not important to them. … And WHO could blame them?

President-elect Obama just announced Arne Duncan, the Chicago schools chief, as his secretary of education. In doing so he suggested that pragmatism, not ideology, will be his guiding principle in navigating the wars inside the Democratic Party over how to improve schools. “Let’s not be clouded by ideology,” he said, praising Duncan’s “deep pragmatism.”

Obama reiterated his support for innovations like merit pay for teachers and charter schools, yet also indicated he may sympathize with the incrementalists in the disrupter-versus-incrementalist debate that George Miller, the chair of the House’s education committee, laid out recently. “We’re not going to transform the schools overnight,” he said.

As Elizabeth wrote yesterday, the next place to watch is the sub-cabinet positions. Will Duncan be advised by reformer-favorites Jon Schnur and Andrew Rotherham, selections that would please current Department of Education officials? Will he be advised instead by Linda Darling-Hammond, the Stanford professor feared by reformers? Alternatively, could both sides of the debate get top spots, guaranteeing internal struggles that go on during the administration? “The battle that’s played out the last few weeks doesn’t just end now with this announcement,” a source who’s been involved in the war so far just told me. “I don’t see Randi just rolling over right now.”

The stakes are the future of the No Child Left Behind law, testing, and what kind of teacher-training changes the federal government encourages.

This morning we had a meeting at which we were told we would have to re-enter each student’s individual results onto a class summary sheet. Had we, in fact, already done this? Yes! But when we asked what happened to the last summary sheet, we were dismissed with a curt, “I don’t know.”

Um… So, okay, let’s review. As part of my job, I did the following:

• Administered the assessment to each individual student.
• Graded the assessment of each individual student.
• Entered the assessment of each individual student onto a class composite summary sheet.
• Handed off the data to people who are supposed to be in charge of entering it into the computer.

And those people, as part of their jobs, did the following:

• Lost my data.

Thousands of students in New York have their roots in Puerto Rico, and many make the trip back every year. When they do, they’re traveling to an island whose children lag behind other American students on a national test of math skills.

According to Education Week, Puerto Rican students have performed far worse than students in the nation as a whole on the math component of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test used to compare student performance across states. (The test, translated into Spanish, has been given in Puerto Rico since 2003. Puerto Rican students don’t take NAEP’s reading section.)

The students’ low scores mean that the many teachers in New York City whose students are recent arrivals from Puerto Rico must try to make up for the effects of a deficient school system. The number of students in city schools who have attended school in Puerto Rico is not available, a spokesperson for the Department of Education told me, but almost 800,000 residents of New York City identified as Puerto Rican in the 2000 census.

Virtually no students in Puerto Rican schools scored at the Proficient or Advanced levels on the test 2005. And while the 2007 scores were reported in a different format, they also show a wide gap between students in Puerto Rico and the rest of the country.

Compared to students in New York City, Puerto Rico’s fourth- and eighth-graders also performed poorly. In 2005, New York City fourth-graders’ average score was 231 in 2005, while 4th graders in Puerto Rico averaged 183; New York’s 8th graders averaged 267 to Puerto Rican 8th graders’ 218.

Back in 1985, the New York City Department of Education collaborated with its Puerto Rican counterpart to provide “education passports” for high school students transferring back and forth between schools in the two locations. The passports provided detailed information about the coursework the student had completed and their grades. But the program was funded with a one-year grant.

Puerto Rican schools made the news in 2006 when a budget crisis forced the public schools and other government services to shut down for about two weeks. And schools closed again for 10 days late February of this year when teachers went on strike, demanding better pay and more materials for their classrooms.

“When are you putting up your Christmas tree, Stacey?” Tiffany asked. (Not their real names.)

“Oh,” Stacey said softly, “um, I don’t know.”

“I thought we were late!” Tiffany exclaimed. “I guess you’ll probably be later than us.”

“It’s not that,” Stacey said. “My dad said we might not have a Christmas tree this year.”

“Why?” Tiffany asked.

“He says we can’t afford one,” Stacey said. “He only gets paid when he works, and he isn’t getting work, really, right now. Like, one or two days a week only, sometimes.”

And two teachers blogging at Daily Kos recently related stories of their students’ fears and realities as their families make tough choices.

Stephen Colbert, who has in recent months hosted KIPP charter school founder Mike Feinberg, cash-for-grades guru Roland Fryer, and New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein, this week spent a few minutes talking with Geoffrey Canada.

Canada, who started the Harlem Children’s Zone, got his message across, loud and clear: Helping poor kids get a good education, go to college, and start careers is great news for the national bottom line.

Who’s the next ed-star Colbert should interview?

[Via This Week In Education]

Eighth grader Aurelie set the scene:

All classes are empty right now. Teachers are a little bit tense and hope that parents and students will all be there for the rendezvous. Some students are preparing some of the speeches they will present in front of the class when parents arrive. The entrance of the school is crowded by people signing in. Balloons and some small tables are placed just where people walk by the principal’s hallway.

Fellow eighth grader Osafo learned from younger students:

In Ms. Marmora’s English Language Arts class the children made a video to explain the books they have been reading in class. The difference between the video these kids made and videos from other classes was that they recommended the books. After watching the videos, I felt like going to get a copy of each of their books.

Sixth grader Yctor shares a few of the many uses of technology in his classes:

I almost forgot — me and my friend are recording in iMovie. Now Ms. Midkiff put our math PowerPoint in the SmartBoard. And my friend who is also helping is recording the parents and we are recording the presentations. And if some students aren’t here the teacher skips their presentations.

And his schoolmate, Bintou, knows just how students feel when they have to present to an audience:

Some students are excited to share their work and nervous. … Even I presented, and I was shy.

Bintou, a 6th grader, let us know how people were feeling as the night commenced:

People are proud to see how much work their kids have done. Some students are excited to share their work and nervous. The presentations are cool and interesting. Even I presented, and I was shy.

Here’s more from 6th grader Yctor:

Ms. Wolk is talking about our accomplishments…. Justin is talking about Champions Book of the Month and how he really liked the book, The Outsiders. Next are Ruby and Darbo, who are talking about cool people like Mr. Levy and Mr. Martin, and what they do and why they are cool. Next is Henry, who is talking about crazy stories. One of his funny stories is ducks vs. elevators.

We are going over to the math room to see our PowerPoint on fractions. I almost forgot — me and my friend are recording in iMovie. Now Ms. Midkiff put our math PowerPoint in the SmartBoard. And my friend who is also helping is recording the parents and we are recording the presentations. And if some students aren’t here the teacher skips their presentations.

Aurelie, an 8th grader, gave us up-to-the-minute updates as events unfolded:

Today is the year’s first Parent Expo Night at CIS 339. Students spent two weeks preparing their projects, so parents could be satisfied by their progress this year. The extraordinary thing is that our school is using technology (laptops) in every class. We want to see the reaction of parents to how strongly this technology has been integrated in our school.

5:25 pm All classes are empty right now. Teachers are a little bit tense and hope that parents and students will all be there for the rendezvous. Some students are preparing some of the speeches they will present in front of the class when parents arrive. The entrance of the school is crowded by people signing in. Balloons and some small tables are placed just where people walk by the principal’s hallway.

Our principal is walking around each class room to see if everything is fine and working perfectly.

6:00 pm A few 8th grade parents are here now. They are signing in. After that they will each receive a raffle ticket.

In class 801, Mr. Blanchard, a math teacher, is explaining how the web site MathScore can help students in home and class. Most of the parents in this class came. Each student is sitting with her or his parents to show them the work they have done since the beginning of school. All the work students show is in Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or PowerPoint.

A parent of one of the students has a big smile on her face when she says, “I really like the way this school uses laptops. My daughter teaches me how to use computer at home. She shows me all her work in her laptop and it is amazing.”

6:45 pm In the Social Studies room at the library, parents are laughing and impressed about a project based on inventions. The tables are placed in a U, and the teachers, Ms. Kaelin and Ms. Abraham, put the display boards on the tables. Parents are walking around to see all the student creations. Students had to create machines which were never invented yet. The room is filled up with laughter. A parent said, “I really don’t know if all those invention will exist one day. It is so creative what they did.”

In Ms. McKeon’s class, they presented a character journal on Google Docs to parents. Ms. McKeon said, “Some parents didn’t come because they have to work, and the weather, too. And I understand that.” Her classroom is very pretty with colorful posters on the wall. Parents are so ecstatic to see computers in every classroom.

The hallway is filled with movement because students are trying to show all their class projects to their parents. There are some students who are showing where parents should go, giving them all the directions they need. They have sheets where the schedule is written, permitting parents to know what hour to go to what room.

6:50 pm In an English Language Arts class, a student is presenting his project on Ning. Ning is a website made by Ms. John, an English Language Arts teacher, so students can blog about a book called To Kill A Mockingbird. Students pretended to be a character in the book in their reading journals.

In each room, teachers place the laptop of each student on their desk. When parents enter the classroom with their child, they sit beside each other and the child shows the work he or she has done. The desks are placed in groups of four or five.  Some courageous students are presenting their projects in front of the class for parents. Parents are happy about the friendship between teachers and students.

7:00 pm The 6th grade Parent Expo is almost over. Some students present their work to parents. All parents here are very admiring of the way we are using laptops in class. One Social Studies teacher insisted that parents go to students’ blogs to see their work and posts. One little girl did an expo presentation about science energy. However, her parents were not there to see the interesting science project she did.

7:15 pm A 7th grade Social Studies teacher, Mr. Mello, is introducing the new technology in our school. He is explaining how students use Google Docs and diary entries. The current project is the trial of Christopher Columbus. Students in this room know what they are talking about. Parents are listening intently to every word. They are focused on the image projected on the board. A parent says, “It is really nice how they are using technology for the education.”

7:40 pm The cafeteria is crowded. Parents and students are eating. There is enough food and drink for everyone — pasta, meat, rice, and more. You cannot see the color of the tables because of the variety of dishes. There are blue, red, pink, and yellow balloons on the edges of each table. People are walking around to fill their plates. While we are eating, two persons in charge are doing the raffle. As prizes, there are bikes and a computer. I didn’t have a chance to meet the lucky one. Everyone is satisfied with the treats.

Another 8th grader, Osafo, presented the event grade-by-grade:

I caught myself praying as I was writing a self-checklist for my students to wrap up this persuasive unit. As a final check for their editorial, I’m going to ask students to go back to their rough drafts and count how many paragraphs they have and write the # in a space: ____ Then, in a moment of desperation and panic, I added next to the blank “<—-If this number isn’t 5, see me.”

And then, I started laughing and couldn’t stop. I realized what I had written was so absurd. I was thinking to myself, God, I hope it’s 5. Please don’t write 3 or 2 or 4. 5 paragraphs please. 5 is the magic number. That’s the only gift I could really appreciate from my kids. Something to affirm that I know what I’m doing slightly. I marvel that by the end of this week or Monday, all students will have written their first persuasive essay, and that I can say I moved 91 students to write a 5 paragraph essay.

Our colleagues at Livable Streets Education (like us, an initiative of The Open Planning Project), have been “encouraging students to explore and question the environments around their school and in their neighborhoods, and to voice the changes they want to see on their streets.” Here, they present some advice to drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists from 1st graders at Manhattan’s PS 87.

[T]here are two problems with this approach. The first is a new problem: Brooks is getting older. It’s one thing to ignore a toddler’s protests—it’s quite another when a increasingly verbal 5-year-old describes to you exactly what he doesn’t like, and asks you point-blank why he has to do it. And the second is a an old problem that’s been around ever since he was diagnosed: How far can we push him without sacrificing his self-esteem? If this is simply too challenging for him at the moment, which may very well be the case, then why are we torturing him by having him face his deficits in front of us and his peers week after week? Should we instead be taking a break from soccer and working on something else? Or should we design a more appropriate intervention, like having his physical therapist work on ball skills with him one-on-one?

Just because we are a community school and we take EVERYONE who walks in the door, including children from a transitional shelter that is in our catchment area, we suffer the consequences of having low-performing students. It is not a reflection on the actual teaching or achievement of our “home grown” students, the ones we keep from Pre-K through 5th grade. What do they want schools to do? Shut their doors? Only let in a select few? I am proud of the fact that we educate everyone equally. I am proud to have over 80% ELLs in my class. The media always puts down these “underperforming” schools and it’s so sad that my school has been categorized this way.

At the time, some claimed students’ failure in high school math classes could be attributed to Regents exams:

On the high school level, where algebra, geometry, and trigonometry are still rigid, formalized subjects, a 25 percent failure record still exists. Officials have blamed the Regents examinations, in part, for this condition.

The rest of the article is after the jump.

This week, I talked to a parent about how hard it was for her to find a high school that says it will offer AP classes to her child, a high-achieving eighth-grader who is legally required to be placed in a team-teaching setting.

Specifically, this student must be in a Collaborative Team Teaching class, where two teachers, one with special education certification, work with a class made up of some students who have special needs and some who do not.

Despite her careful research, the mother told me, it hasn’t always been clear which high schools will meet her child’s needs. In the high school directory released each year by the DOE, most selective schools say they will offer special education services “as needed.” Some schools have reputations for including kids with all kids of special needs in their most challenging courses, but others do not.

When the mother spoke to an administrator at one high school well known for its special education programs, he told her that the school does not offer AP courses in the CTT format. Instead, he recommended that she try to have her child’s needs legally recategorized to require general education classes. That way, the administrator said, her child could take AP classes and receive extra help or counseling during the school day. But her child wouldn’t be in the most appropriate class setting.

AP classes aren’t guaranteed, and schools make the decision whether to offer them, DOE spokeswoman Maibe Maibe Fuentes-Gonzalez told me. Because CTT classes are mandated to have a 60:40 ratio of general education to special education students, it could be hard for schools with few high-achieving kids with special needs to provide AP classes for them. Small schools in particular could have trouble opening AP classes to students who require a CTT setting.

“Resources are limited, and not every school offers every option,” Maggie Moroff of Advocates for Children told me. “If it is true that the only way that this young person can be served is in a CTT class, and can do the AP academics, then the DOE should be working with this particular student to find a school that offers that, but it can’t force a particular school to offer that.”

But Moroff said it’s tough to figure out before enrolling which high schools offer what kinds of services. That’s why AFC is pushing for the DOE to improve access to information about special education, said.

It was 10am on a school day when my middle school-age daughter called. “What’s wrong?” I answered, knowing something was up. She’s not the kind of kid who sneaks in calls during the day, so I was sure it was something bad.

“I totally forgot my homework and English is in 20 minutes!” she whispered. “Can you e-mail it to me?”

I breathed a sigh of relief before becoming annoyed. Remembering her homework is her responsibility. Yes, I could send it to her with a click of a mouse, but should I? What kind of message would I be sending along with her essay?

I didn’t fully realize it before, but all the craziness that was constantly going on around me was clouding my teaching. With all of that gone, I can identify my weak points and improve on them.

Sacks ponders what that “craziness” looks like — computers that don’t work and no money to pay a technician, chronic absenteeism among students — and how it forces teachers to plan for unexpected obstacles. What does it mean to compare teacher effectiveness in such different environments, she asks:

Teachers at schools like mine get used the multitude of x factors. In fact, we stop expecting everything to be “just so” and start going out of our way to plan for all of the unexpected things that might happen. Does this make us less effective? Maybe it does, in a way. It is harder to address problems quickly and effectively, when new problems present themselves simultaneously. But is it fair to call us less effective? Is it actually fair to measure my effectiveness in the same way my former colleague’s teaching is now measured, when the playing field is not level? Is the job of teaching in these very disparate environments even the same?

If the quality of my teaching is measured by my students’ scores on the same test that Joe’s students also take, and soon, I am compensated based on this same determination, then tell me—why should I keep on working at a school that can’t provide me everything I need to reach my full potential as a teacher?

A map of the schools where air pollution is greatest, from USA Today.

PS 20 on Staten Island is more polluted than nine out of 10 schools in the country, according to a a USA Today investigative report.

The newspaper looked at air pollution levels at schools across the country and found that hundreds of thousands of students are exposed to high levels of air pollution at the schools they attend. But the study emphasized that environmental scientists haven’t devoted much attention to determining how much pollution is safe for kids.

The report found PS 20 to be the city’s most polluted public school. But Brooklyn has it worst of the five boroughs, with the greatest number of schools ranked among the most toxic. (See the schools with the worst pollution problems in each borough.)

Some good news for New Yorkers: None of the city’s schools were among the 435 worst polluted in the nation.

The newspaper used the Environmental Protection Agency’s pollution model to rank schools on their exposure to chemical pollutants. The mathematical model uses information provided by polluters, along with weather information, to track the likely movement of toxic chemicals in a given area. Scientists and EPA officials stressed that the numbers are estimates that can best be used to identify schools for additional, on-site pollution testing.

Although the EPA sets standards for acceptable levels of pollution in the workplace, it has not set a similar standard for acceptable levels of exposure for children at school. Because children are smaller than adults and still developing, they may be more vulnerable to negative health effects of toxic chemicals. Yet the EPA has done little to assess pollution exposure at schools, USA Today reported:

The U.S. EPA, which has a special office charged with protecting children’s health, has invested millions of taxpayer dollars in pollution models that could help identify schools where toxic chemicals saturate the air. Even so, USA TODAY found, the agency has all but ignored examining whether the air is unsafe at the very locations where kids are required to gather.

Use USA Today’s searchable map to find out how your local school compares.

The ten most polluted public schools in each borough, according to USA Today:

Bronx:

• P.S. 43 Jonas Bronck School, 165 Brown Place (35th percentile)
• P.S. 161 Ponce De Leon School, 628 Tinton Ave. (36th percentile)
• P.S. 62 Inocensio Casanova School, 660 Fox St. (36th percentile)
• M.S. 302 Luisa Dessus Cruz, 681 Kelly St. (36th percentile)
• P.S. 277, 519 St. Ann’s Ave. (38th percentile)
• J.H.S. 162, L. Rodriguez de Tio School, 600 St. Ann’s Ave. (38th percentile)
• Samuel Gompers Vocational High School, 455 Southern Boulevard (38th percentile)
• P.S. 25 Bilingual School, 811 E. 149th St. (38th percentile)
• P.S. 5 Port Morris School, 564 Jackson Ave. (38th percentile)
• Foreign Language Academy of Global Studies, 470 Jackson Ave. (38th percentile)
• Three other Bronx schools also ranked at the 38th percentile.
  

Brooklyn:

• P.S. 373 Brooklyn Transition Center, 185 Ellery St. (12th percentile)
• Urban Assembly School for Urban Environment, 70 Tompkins Ave. (12th percentile)
• The Brooklyn Charter School and P.S. 23 Carter G. Woodson, 545 Willoughby Ave. (12th percentile)
• P.S. 59 William Floyd School, 211 Throop Ave. (12th percentile)
• P.S. 297 Richard Stockton School, 700 Park Ave. (12th percentile)
• P.S. 25 Eubie Blake School, 787 Lafayette Ave. (12th percentile)
• P.S. 304 Casmir Pulaski School, 208 Hart St. (12th percentile)
• J.H.S. 318 Eugeno Maria Dehostos School, 101 Walton St. (17th percentile)
• P.S. 120 Carlos Tapia Magnet School, 18 Beaver St. (17th percentile)
• P.S. 250 George H. Lindsay, 108 Montrose Ave. (17th percentile)
• One additional Brooklyn school, P.S. 257 John F. Hylan School at 60 Cook St., also ranked at the 17th percentile.

Manhattan:

• Richard R. Green High School of Teaching, 421 East 88th St. (22nd percentile)
• East Side Middle School and P.S. 158 Bayard Taylor School, 1458 York Ave. (23rd percentile)
• The Family School, 323 E. 47th St. (26th percentile)
• Environmental Science Secondary School and M.S. 224 Manhattan East Center, 410 E. 100th St. (30th percentile)
• New York Center for Autism Charter School and P.S. 50 Vito Marcantonio School, 433 E. 100th St. (30th percentile)
• P.S. 59 Beekman Hill School, 228 E. 57th St. (30th percentile)
• High School of Art and Design, 1075 Second Ave. (30th percentile)
• P.S. 38 Roberto Clemente, 232 E. 103rd St. (30th percentile)

Queens:

• P.S. 85 Judge Charles Vallone, 23-70 31st St., Long Island City (14th percentile)
• Academy for New Americans, 30-14 30th St., Astoria (14th percentile)
• P.S. 17 Henry David Thoreau School, 28-37 29th St., Astoria (14th percentile)
• P.S. 234, 30-15 29th St., Astoria (14th percentile)
• P.S. 84 Steinway School, 22-45 41st St., Astoria (15th percentile)
• I.S. 141 The Steinway School, 37-11 21st Ave., Long Island City (15th percentile)
• P.S. 2 Alfred Zimberg School, 75-10 21st. Ave., Jackson Heights (15th percentile)
• Newcomers High School, Academy of American Studies, 28-01 41st. Ave. (17th percentile)
• Middle College High School, High School for Applied Communications, and International High School at LaGuardia, 31-10 Thomson Ave. (17th percentile)
• P.S. 78, 48-09 Center Blvd. (18th percentile)

Staten Island:

• P.S. 20 Port Richmond School, 161 Park Ave. (11th percentile)
• P.S. 56 Louis Desario School, 250 Kramer Ave. (20th percentile)
• P.S. 18 John G. Whittier School, 221 Broadway (23rd percentile)
• Port Richmond High School, 45 Innis St. (23rd percentile)
• P.S. 6 Cpl. Allan F. Kivlehan School, 555 Page Ave. (28th percentile)
• I.S. 34 Tottenville, 528 Academy Ave. (28th percentile)
• P.S. 3 Pleasant Plains School, 80 South Goff Ave. (30th percentile)
• P.S. 26 Carteret School, 4108 Victory Boulevard (30th percentile)
• P.S. 21 Margaret Emery-Elm Park School, 168 Hooker Pl. (30th percentile)
• P.S. 44 Thomas C. Brown School, 80 Maple Parkway (31st percentile)
• Four other schools in Staten Island ranked at the 31st percentile.