Just one school district in all of Upstate New York managed to crack the top 25 in scoring on the latest round of statewide math and English language arts assessment tests, according to new state data.
The Fayetteville-Manlius Central School District ranked No. 25 statewide in ELA with 75% of its students testing proficient or better and was tied for 17th in math at 87%.
No other school district in Central New York or Upstate New York was among the top 25 in either category. The other top schools were all in Downstate New York, mostly on Long Island or in Westchester County.
The New York State Education Department released math and ELA test scores for grades 3 through 8 earlier in December. The new batch of scores is from the 2022-2023 school year.
Syracuse.com analyzed the data and ranked every district using the combined scores on math and ELA tests for all grades.
Statewide, the Scarsdale Union Free School District and the East Williston Union Free School District tied for the highest proficiency level in ELA at 86% or better. East Williston was also No. 1 in math at 93% proficient or better, according to the state.
The Syracuse City School District had some of the lowest proficiency levels in both ELA and math. Just 20% of the district’s students were proficient or better in ELA last year, ranking Syracuse No. 644 statewide out of 661 districts.
The city was No. 532 for math out of 535 districts at 16% proficient or better.
Across all of New York, 48% of students tested proficient or better in ELA and 52% for math.
The high rankings for suburban schools are not a surprise. They tend to enjoy advantages that urban schools don’t, including more money and newer buildings and equipment.
Many students in urban districts like Syracuse live in poverty or have difficult home lives. Those factors bring additional challenges to learning during the school day and ultimately show up in measures of achievement like test scores and graduation rates.
You can see the complete statewide rankings on the latest assessments in the table below. If you can’t see the table, click here to open it in a new window.
You can search by entering a complete or partial district name in the search box or a county name. You can also click on the column headers to sort the table as you like.
Click the buttons above the search box to see additional details on state testing, including raw numbers of students tested in each district on each test.
If you see N/A next to a district, it means the state did not report data for that district in that category.
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