The Riverside School for Makers and Artists

Proficiency on state tests is the main thing to come to terms with here. ELA proficiency is 18.1% and math 18.5% — both roughly a third of the District 3 averages of 59% and 54%. The overall school quality score of 0.73 out of 4 is far below the district average of 2.27. Both subjects peaked around 2019 (ELA 34%, math 24.8%) and have trended down since, with math showing more stability in the past two years (18.5% in 2025) while ELA has continued slipping from 34% in 2019 to 18.1% in 2025. Scores are uneven across grades — 5th graders hit 27% in ELA, while 6th and 3rd graders are in the low teens — which suggests the academic picture changes a lot by year and cohort.

The culture survey reads like two schools in one. Teachers give the school strong marks on relationships with students (100%) and collegial trust (70%), and there were zero suspensions in 2023-24, down from 5 and 7 in the two prior years — a notably improved discipline trajectory. But parent satisfaction is 55% (district avg 88%), parent-principal trust is 44%, and teacher-reported safety is 80% (district avg 94%). Attendance is the biggest concern: 82.5% versus the district's 90.4%, with 38.7% of students chronically absent. On the ground, this often looks like a warm, low-conflict school where adults know kids well, but where families feel less heard by leadership and where getting kids to school every day is a real challenge.

The student body is about 48% Hispanic, 34% Black, 10% White, and 7% Asian, with a 67% diversity index, a 27% IEP rate, and an economic need index of 76 — meaning most students come from lower-income households. That profile differs sharply from the surrounding neighborhood, where 83% of adults have a bachelor's degree and median household income tops $162,000. The result is a school that serves a far more economically diverse population than its immediate blocks suggest, which helps explain the wide gap between per-student PTA fundraising here ($13) and the district average ($627). The ELL support program is one of the few formal offerings beyond the accelerated/honors academic track, and program richness overall (34.7/100) is modest.

The school sits in the Upper West Side-Lincoln Square area, one of Manhattan's wealthiest and most family-oriented neighborhoods. Median household income is around $162,000, more than eight in ten adults hold a bachelor's degree, and median home values exceed $1.5 million. About 15% of households have children at home, and the poverty rate is in the single digits. This is a neighborhood where schools are usually oversubscribed, where parents are highly engaged, and where extracurricular dollars flow easily — which makes the low per-student PTA figure here more striking.

It's not an easy walk to transit. The closest station is 66 St-Lincoln Center on the 1 line, about 10 minutes on foot, with 59 St-Columbus Circle (1) and the A/C/B/D lines roughly 11–12 minutes away. Most families will plan the commute rather than stumble into it.