New York City Charter School of the Arts

This school's academic trajectory is one of the more dramatic turnaround stories in the data set. ELA proficiency rose from 35.5% in 2017 to 70.6% in 2025, and math climbed from 31.5% to 59.2% over the same period, with the biggest jumps coming after 2021. Even with that growth, the school sits a bit below the district average in ELA (70.6% vs. 73.2%) and noticeably below in math (59.2% vs. 72.5%) — the math gap is the more significant one. Within the building, eighth graders outperform sixth graders in math (66.7% vs. 48.3%), suggesting skills build over time. The school's overall quality review score of 2.6 out of 4 is just below the district average of 2.9.

The adults in this building clearly like working with each other. Teachers rate their principal's leadership at 96%, instructional quality at 95%, and collegial trust at 91% — all solid numbers, with instructional quality running notably above the district average of roughly 90%. Parent satisfaction and parent-teacher trust both land at 91%, near the district average. Attendance on a typical day is healthy at 91.2%, essentially in line with the district. The headline concern here is chronic absenteeism: 66.3% of students are chronically absent, which is an unusually high share even in a post-pandemic landscape and something any family should ask the school about directly. Discipline data and a separate teacher-reported safety measure weren't provided in this dataset, so the day-to-day feel on those dimensions can't be characterized from the numbers.

The student body is 40% Hispanic, 34% Black, 18% White, 5% multiracial, and 2% Asian, with a diversity index of 73%. That mix does not match the Financial District around it — the surrounding census tract is largely wealthy, highly educated, and predominantly white. The economic need index of 59.8% tells you that most families here qualify for some level of economic assistance, which is unusual for a school sitting in one of the city's priciest zip codes. About 26% of students have IEPs, a meaningfully higher share than the citywide average, and families should expect a fairly wide range of learning needs in classrooms.

The Financial District-Battery Park City area is defined by high-rise apartments and corporate office towers rather than block after block of family houses. The census figures tell the story: median household income is $192,111, the poverty rate is 6.1%, 82.7% of adults have a bachelor's degree or higher, and only 13.9% of households have children under 18. Homeownership is just 24.9% and the median home value tops $1.27 million — most residents are renters, many of them transplants working in finance or tech. For families whose kids attend this school, the neighborhood is more of a workplace destination than a residential base, which explains the demographic mismatch.

Getting here by subway is easy. Bowling Green (4, 5) is about a two-minute walk, and Rector St is served by both the R and W lines and the 1 line, each about a three-minute walk from the school.