Data Sources
NYC Schools is a hobby project covering New York City's public schools, not an official NYC DOE resource. Every figure on this site comes from one of the public datasets below. Always confirm anything important directly with NYC DOE.
Which schools are covered
Every school in NYC DOE's official school directory (LCGMS): district schools, zoned and unzoned, plus charter schools. Independent, private, and religious schools are not included. They don't have attendance zones, don't admit through MySchools, and don't publish the School Quality Reports, NYC School Survey, or (in most cases) state test results this site is built on, so there's no comparable sourced data to show for them.
Understanding the two rankings
This site shows two independent rankings per school -- SchoolDigger and Niche -- side by side, never blended into one number. Neither is "the" ranking or a fallback for the other; which one matters more depends entirely on what a parent cares about, since they measure different things:
SchoolDigger
Purely academic. Ranks schools by an "Average Standard Score" computed only from state standardized test results (normalized across grades and subjects so different tests can be compared on one scale). Nothing else -- not class size, not diversity, not reviews -- factors in. A good fit for parents who want the most direct read on state test performance alone.
Niche
Broader. By Niche's own stated methodology, its rankings weigh state test scores alongside student-teacher ratio, student diversity, teacher quality, grade school ratings, and the overall quality of the school district. A good fit for parents who want test performance considered alongside school environment and community factors, not in isolation.
Because the criteria differ, a school can rank very differently on each -- that's expected, not an error in either figure. Niche only assigns an individual numeric rank to roughly its top 1,000 schools statewide per level, but gives nearly every school a letter grade (A+ to D-), so schools outside that range show their Niche grade alone (for example "Niche: B+").
NYC DOE MySchools Admissions Data
Per-program, per-priority-group seat and offer data, scraped from MySchools.nyc's public API. MySchools only ever exposes the most recently completed cycle, and DOE fuzzes small applicant counts for privacy, so figures here are estimates.
As of: Through the 2025-26 cycle for middle school, 2024-25 for kindergarten (2025-26 kindergarten results not yet published; checked Oct 16, 2026)
NYC Open Data: School Quality Reports Data
Attendance, chronic absenteeism, and grade 3-8 ELA/Math proficiency rates, filtered to Elementary/Middle/K-8 schools.
As of: 2024-25 school year (latest published; checked Oct 16, 2026)
NYC DOE: Demographic Snapshot
Enrollment, race/ethnicity, gender, students-with-disabilities, English Language Learner, and poverty rates per school.
As of: 2025-26 school year (latest published; checked Oct 16, 2026)
NYC DOE: NY State ELA/Math/Science Test Results
Per-school, per-grade, per-student-group state test results -- proficiency Level 1-4 counts/percents and mean scale score for ELA, Math, and Science.
As of: 2026 school year (Science: 2025-26) -- latest published; checked Oct 16, 2026
NYCPS: NYC School Survey public data files
School-level Family, Student, and Teacher survey responses, topic scores, and response rates. District and city comparisons shown on this site are weighted from NYCPS-published positive and negative response counts.
As of: 2025 and 2026 survey results (2026 is the latest published; checked Oct 16, 2026)
NYC Open Data: Elementary School Zones
Elementary school zone boundaries.
As of: 2024-25 school year (latest published on NYC Open Data; checked Oct 16, 2026)
NYC Open Data: Middle School Zones
Middle school zone boundaries.
As of: 2024-25 school year (latest published on NYC Open Data; checked Oct 16, 2026)
NYC Open Data: High School Zones
High school zone boundaries (limited -- most NYC high schools admit citywide or by district, not by zone).
As of: 2024-25 school year (latest published on NYC Open Data; checked Oct 16, 2026)
NYC Open Data: AddressPoint, PLUTO & CommonPlace
Each school's map pin: the city's own building address point for the school's current LCGMS address, cross-checked against its PLUTO tax lot (falling back to the lot itself, or DOE's CommonPlace point, when no address point matches).
As of: Fetched October 16, 2026
NYC DOE LCGMS School Directory
School names, addresses, DBNs, and categories for every NYC DOE school.
As of: Fetched October 16, 2026 (2026-27 school year)
StreetEasy
Links out to StreetEasy's own filtered search results for sale and rental listings zoned into each school. Only available for schools with a real geographic attendance zone -- StreetEasy's own school database is itself incomplete, so a small number of zoned schools have no matching link.
As of: Verified 2026-07-20
SchoolDigger Rankings
Elementary, middle, and high school state rank-out-of-total figures. Unlike every other source on this page, this is not a public government record -- SchoolDigger is a commercial data provider that computes its own rankings, purely from state standardized test results (an "Average Standard Score" normalized across grades and subjects, nothing else factored in). Shown here because it's free to use and cited like everything else, not because it's an official DOE figure. See "Understanding the two rankings" above for how this compares to Niche.
As of: SchoolDigger rankings updated 2025-12-04 (latest; checked Oct 16, 2026), fetched 2026-07-20 (statewide NY, elementary/middle/high)
Niche Rankings
Elementary, middle, and high school state rank-out-of-total figures from Niche, a commercial ranking provider equally weighted alongside SchoolDigger on this site -- neither is treated as primary. Niche's own stated ranking factors are broader than SchoolDigger's: state test scores, student-teacher ratio, student diversity, teacher quality, grade school ratings, and overall school district quality. Niche only publishes an individual numeric rank for roughly its top 1,000 elementary and 560 middle schools statewide, but gives nearly every school a letter grade (A+ to D-), so this site shows the grade alongside the rank -- or the grade alone when Niche doesn't number a school -- and sorts Niche by grade first. See "Understanding the two rankings" above for how this compares to SchoolDigger.
As of: Niche 2027 rankings, fetched 2026-10-16; letter grades fetched 2026-10-17 (statewide NY, elementary/middle/high, filtered to NYC schools)