P.S. 114 Ryder Elementary

Ryder's results are genuinely strong and clearly trending up. ELA proficiency at 63.6% sits about five points above the district average of 58.4%, and math at 74.2% runs nearly thirteen points above the district's 61.4%. The trajectory is the more striking story: in 2016 this school posted 22.9% ELA and 15.8% math, and it has climbed almost every year since, with a particularly large jump in math this past year from 48.4% to 74.2%. Grade 3 numbers (73.5% ELA, 92.3% math) are doing much of the lifting, with grade 4 noticeably softer at 48.1% ELA and 52.6% math — worth knowing if you have a rising fourth-grader.

The survey data is strikingly warm. Parents give the school a 94% satisfaction mark, parent-teacher trust sits at 96%, and every surveyed family agreed there are strong relationships here; teachers rate instruction quality at 99% and their own sense of safety at 100%. Discipline is essentially a non-issue — a single suspension over 2023–24 and a 0% suspension rate against a district rate above 1%. The one number that gives pause is attendance: 88.8% is below the district's 90.5%, and chronic absenteeism tops 55%, meaning more than half of students missed the equivalent of a month or more of school. That gap between how families feel about the school and how often they actually show up is the most important thing for an incoming parent to understand.

The student body is 77% Black, 13% Hispanic, and 6% Asian — a population that doesn't quite mirror its Canarsie neighborhood, which has a 12.8% poverty rate and a median income of $82,184, well above the city median. The school's economic need index of 78.1% suggests a meaningful share of families come from outside the immediate zoned area or that the school's surrounding block has shifted toward renters and lower-income households than the broader Canarsie picture. Twenty percent of students have IEPs, higher than is typical, and the diversity index sits at 44%.

Canarsie around the school reads as a stable, homeowner-anchored part of Brooklyn: half of households own, the median home value is roughly $688,000, and 28.7% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher. Families tend to be smaller here than the citywide norm — only about 15% of households have children under 18 — and the neighborhood skews older and middle-income. It's the kind of place where the same family is likely to be across the street for a generation.

The L train's Canarsie–Rockaway Parkway terminal is about a nine-minute walk, with East 105th Street another five minutes down the line for families coming from other directions.