The Mott Hall School

ELA proficiency of 69.7% sits roughly 23 points above the District 6 average — a meaningful lead that has held up over time, with results ranging from the mid-60s to high 70s since 2016. Math tells a more complicated story: proficiency peaked at 84.6% in 2019 and held strong through 2023, but has dropped sharply since, with the 2025 score of 56.1% representing a 16-point slide from the prior year and the weakest math result in nearly a decade. The disconnect between grade 8 ELA (76.8%) and grade 8 math (53.4%) is also striking. Trajectory looks improving on the ELA side and declining on math, though the math drop is the bigger flag for families to ask about.

Day-to-day, teachers give leadership a perfect trust score (100%) and rate instruction quality at 96% — well above the district average — which points to a staff that feels supported and aligned. Parent satisfaction runs at 92% and parent-principal trust at 96%, suggesting families feel heard even though the survey response rate was a healthy 63%. The chronic absenteeism figure of 85.3% is a real concern: it means the vast majority of students are missing enough school to flag as chronically absent, even as overall attendance sits at a respectable 94.4%. Discipline is minimal — just 3 suspensions last year for a 1% rate — though the count has crept up from zero over three years, something worth tracking.

Mott Hall serves a student body that is 73% Hispanic, 12% White, 9% Black, and 5% Asian, with an economic need index of 70.6% reflecting a largely low-income enrollment. About 13% of students have IEPs and the school offers ELL support. The neighborhood around it skews heavily Dominican and largely working-class, with a median household income of roughly $55,800 and a 22% poverty rate, though a third of adults hold a bachelor's degree. The school's demographic mix mirrors the surrounding census tract fairly closely, with somewhat higher White representation than the neighborhood average — likely reflecting its screened admissions drawing from a wider swath of Upper Manhattan.

Washington Heights south of 165th Street is a dense, walkable, predominantly renter neighborhood where median home values still run around $750,000 but only 8% of households own — meaning most families live in apartments. Just 9% of households include children, which sounds low but reflects the young-adult skew of the surrounding blocks. About a third of adult residents hold a bachelor's degree, and the poverty rate sits around 22%, painting a neighborhood that's economically mixed but leans working-class. The school benefits from being centrally located in a part of the Heights with strong transit access.

Three subway options within a short walk: the C at 163 St-Amsterdam Av (about 4 minutes), the A and C at 168 St (about 6 minutes), and the 1 at 168 St-Washington Heights (about 6 minutes).