Ps 96 Joseph Lanzetta, New York NY

Original Research by School Decision on Ps 96 Joseph Lanzetta

PS 96 Joseph Lanzetta sits on East 120th Street in East Harlem, serving pre-kindergarten through eighth grade within New York City Geographic District 4. It is a regular public school, not a charter, and draws from one of the city's most economically concentrated communities: nearly all students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and the student body is predominantly Hispanic with a substantial Black population. The school feeds into the full arc of elementary and middle grades, so a family enrolling a pre-K child could remain here through the end of eighth grade.

The most pressing thing a parent should understand about PS 96 is where the academic results stand. On the New York State Testing Program, proficiency rates in both math and ELA across every tested grade are low, running in roughly the low-to-mid twenties range at best and single digits at the floor. The pattern holds from third grade through eighth. Science results are similarly thin, with fifth grade returning no proficient students at all in the most recent data and eighth grade only marginally better. Placed against districts in New York County, the school's overall proficiency index sits in the bottom quartile of that comparison set. These figures should prompt a parent to ask the school directly about instructional supports, tutoring resources, and how individual students who are behind are identified and served. The data alone cannot say what is causing the gap or what the school is doing about it, and those are fair questions to raise.

The social studies data in the system is from a much earlier school year and cannot be used to characterize current performance in that subject.

Two district-level changes are directly relevant to families at PS 96. In the 2024-25 school year, District 4 completed its transition under the NYC Reads mandate, which requires elementary schools to drop prior balanced-literacy approaches and adopt one of three approved phonics-based curricula. This is a real shift in how early reading is taught, and parents of younger children should ask which curriculum the school selected and how teachers are being trained in it. On the math side, the NYC Solves initiative will standardize middle school math instruction district-wide in 2026-27, moving toward a problem-based, conceptual curriculum called Illustrative Mathematics. For families with students currently in the middle grades, that transition is coming soon.

For middle school and beyond, the admissions landscape in New York has shifted in ways that matter for East Harlem families. Screened programs have returned to academic-merit criteria after a pandemic-era lottery pause, and the city now allows families to apply to any public middle school citywide, where previously in-district priority dominated. A publicly reported note indicates that Columbia Secondary School gives geographic priority to families living above 96th Street, which covers District 4 students. A parent planning ahead for eighth-grade graduation and high school should begin understanding screened program criteria early, given where the school's current proficiency levels sit.

The neighborhood itself is fully urban in character: dense, walkable, and woven into New York City's transit infrastructure. The school occupies a typical block-fabric location rather than a suburban-style campus. The housing market in the immediate zip code carries home values well above the state median, and rents have been climbing over the past year, reflecting broader Manhattan market dynamics that do not align with the economic profile of most families the school serves. New York City's housing-growth push, including the 2024 City of Yes zoning reform, is adding units across the borough, but the affordability picture in this part of Manhattan remains strained.

Chronic absenteeism data and graduation rate data were not available in the records for this school. The school does not serve high school grades, so a graduation rate is not applicable. IEP and English learner rates were also absent from the data, which is a gap worth asking the school to address directly given that both populations are common in schools with this demographic profile.

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Academic performance

How students perform on state tests, by grade, set against the district.

Math

Grade 319%

School 19% · District 46% · ▼ 27 pts below district

▼ 40 pts below state median · ▼ 39 pts below county median

Grade 410%

School 10% · District 49% · ▼ 39 pts below district

▼ 49 pts below state median · ▼ 51 pts below county median

Grade 515%

School 15% · District 44% · ▼ 29 pts below district

▼ 36 pts below state median · ▼ 40 pts below county median

Grade 626%

School 26% · District 45% · ▼ 18 pts below district

▼ 19 pts below state median · ▼ 19 pts below county median

Grade 721%

School 21% · District 45% · ▼ 25 pts below district

▼ 32 pts below state median · ▼ 37 pts below county median

Grade 820%

School 20% · District 38% · ▼ 19 pts below district

▼ 17 pts below state median · ▲ 20 pts above county median

English language arts

Grade 319%

School 19% · District 44% · ▼ 24 pts below district

▼ 33 pts below state median · ▼ 37 pts below county median

Grade 420%

School 20% · District 52% · ▼ 32 pts below district

▼ 33 pts below state median · ▼ 43 pts below county median

Grade 523%

School 23% · District 52% · ▼ 29 pts below district

▼ 31 pts below state median · ▼ 42 pts below county median

Grade 621%

School 21% · District 46% · ▼ 25 pts below district

▼ 24 pts below state median · ▼ 26 pts below county median

Grade 728%

School 28% · District 50% · ▼ 22 pts below district

▼ 19 pts below state median · ▼ 28 pts below county median

Grade 819%

School 19% · District 48% · ▼ 29 pts below district

▼ 30 pts below state median · ▼ 34 pts below county median

Science

Grade 50%

School 0% · District 37% · ▼ 37 pts below district

▼ 42 pts below state median · ▼ 46 pts below county median

Grade 812%

School 12% · District 30% · ▼ 18 pts below district

▼ 21 pts below state median · ▲ 4 pts above county median

Social studies

Grade 567%

School 67% · district not reported

▼ 25 pts below state median · ▼ 12 pts below county median

Grade 825%

School 25% · district not reported

▼ 53 pts below state median · ▼ 29 pts below county median

This schoolNEW YORK CITY GEOGRAPHIC DISTRICT # 4, same grade

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.