Fiorello H Laguardia High School, New York NY

Original Research by School Decision on Fiorello H Laguardia High School

Fiorello H LaGuardia High School sits on Amsterdam Avenue in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Manhattan's Upper West Side, a location deeply woven into the city's cultural fabric near Lincoln Center. It is a regular public high school serving grades nine through twelve, with enrollment spread across those four grades in roughly balanced cohorts.

The school draws a mixed student body by race and ethnicity, with white and Asian students each comprising meaningful shares of the enrollment, alongside substantial numbers of Hispanic and Black students. About a third of the enrollment qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, placing the school at a moderate level of economic diversity compared to many New York City schools.

State assessment data was not available for this school, and no four-year graduation rate or chronic absenteeism measure was provided. These gaps in reported outcomes make it difficult to characterize the school's academic performance or attendance patterns from the data at hand. A parent seeking concrete performance metrics would want to contact the school directly or consult the city's school-quality reporting tools for classroom-level information, test results if the school reports them separately, and feedback from current families.

The school does offer a breadth of arts programming, with course work in dance, fine arts, music, and theater available. This reflects the school's presence in a neighborhood steeped in performing arts and suggests that creative coursework is a centerpiece of its identity, though the full academic program and other electives or specialized pathways were not detailed in the available data.

The Upper West Side itself is one of Manhattan's densest, most walkable neighborhoods, integrated into a fine-grained street grid with ground-floor retail and restaurants, residential buildings above, and constant pedestrian traffic. The neighborhood is home to major cultural institutions and sits steps from subway lines, making it highly accessible by transit. Housing in the zip code where the school is located carries a high market value; rents are also elevated. This suggests the school serves families with varying economic means but draws from one of the city's pricier residential areas, where a smaller portion of families qualify for free or reduced lunch.

District 3, which encompasses the Upper West Side, has undergone significant admissions and program changes in recent years. Middle school admissions shifted to a lottery with academic screens removed, paired with a diversity plan that reserves seats for lower-income and lower-performing students. The Department of Education also proposed and then withdrew plans to close or relocate multiple Upper West Side schools, an episode that consumed substantial community energy over more than a year and affected school stability and choice for families in the district. Additionally, the city overhauled its Gifted and Talented admissions system, replacing a single high-stakes test with a lottery for eligible students and shifting entry criteria to report card grades for grades one through four, which has reshaped who gains access to accelerated programs across the district.

The school's location and arts emphasis position it within a particular slice of the city's educational ecology. A parent considering this school would benefit from seeking out recent enrollment and program information directly from the school and exploring how its course offerings and support systems align with a student's academic and creative interests, since the publicly available performance data does not offer the detail needed to form a full picture of classroom experience or outcomes.

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Academic performance

How students graduate and prepare for what comes next.

Graduation rate (ACGR)

>=99%Cohort of 636 students · Class of 2021

The federal source publishes a banded range instead of an exact rate when the graduating cohort is small enough that an exact number could risk identifying individual students.

How this school compares to all schools in this state

Each dot is one school’s SY 2020-21 graduation rate, binned by integer rate. Taller columns mean more schools at that rate. This school is highlighted.

1,253 schools plotted. 14 additional schools' rates are federally suppressed and not shown. Data: EDFacts SY 2020-21.

Advanced Placement & IB

22 subjects offered · 2023-24

Each card is one AP or IB subject. The headline number is the share of students scoring 3 or higher on the exam — the threshold for college credit at most universities. The bar below each rate shows the underlying distribution across performance levels.

Score:12· no credit345· extremely well qualified

Math and Computer Science

Calculus AB

63 tested · Grade 10

87.3%

scored 3 or higher

Calculus BC

13 tested

100.0%

scored 3 or higher

Computer Science Principles

26 tested · Grade 9

73.1%

scored 3 or higher

Statistics

55 tested

83.6%

scored 3 or higher

Sciences

Biology

21 tested · Grade 10

52.4%

scored 3 or higher

Chemistry

10 tested

60.0%

scored 3 or higher

Environmental Science

91 tested

75.8%

scored 3 or higher

Physics 1

30 tested

63.3%

scored 3 or higher

History and Social Sciences

Comparative Government and Politics

99 tested

76.8%

scored 3 or higher

Psychology

48 tested

56.3%

scored 3 or higher

U.S. History

178 tested · Grade 10

91.6%

scored 3 or higher

World Languages and Cultures

Chinese Language and Culture

26 tested · Grade 9, Grade 10

96.2%

scored 3 or higher

French Language and Culture

21 tested · Grade 9, Grade 10

57.1%

scored 3 or higher

German Language and Culture

3 tested · Grade 9

0.0%

scored 3 or higher

Italian Language and Culture

2 tested · Grade 10

0.0%

scored 3 or higher

Japanese Language and Culture

19 tested · Grade 10

47.4%

scored 3 or higher

Spanish Language and Culture

32 tested · Grade 10

75.0%

scored 3 or higher

Arts

Art History

23 tested

82.6%

scored 3 or higher

Other

Language and Comp

251 tested

72.9%

scored 3 or higher

Literature and Comp

84 tested

92.9%

scored 3 or higher

U S Government and Politics

100 tested · Grade 10

77.0%

scored 3 or higher

World History

348 tested · Grade 10

83.0%

scored 3 or higher

New York Regents Exams

4 courses reported · 2024-25

End-of-course exams required for a New York Regents diploma. Each row shows the cohort size and the share of students scoring at the proficient level or higher.

Course	Students tested	% proficient
Ela	637	93.0%
Social Studies	618	96.0%
Science	268	93.0%
Math	37	51.0%

Graduation rate (ACGR) reflects the federally published Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate for the most recent year available. We refresh this data annually at the close of each academic year in June. The federal source publishes a banded rate (for example, "90-94%") instead of an exact number for cohorts small enough to risk identifying individual students. The state distribution chart, where shown, plots every school in the state with a published rate or band; schools whose rate is federally suppressed are excluded. Where the federal source publishes a band rather than an exact rate, the school is placed within its band using a stable, ID-derived offset, so its position is consistent across visits.