School 5-john Williams, Rochester NY

Original Research by School Decision on School 5-john Williams

School 5-John Williams sits on North Plymouth Avenue in Rochester's west side, a pre-K through eighth grade school within the Rochester City School District. The school serves a moderately large enrollment for its grade band, and its student body reflects the economic challenges of the surrounding neighborhood: nearly all students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which places it among the most economically concentrated schools in any urban district. Racially, the school is diverse, drawing Black, Hispanic, white, and Asian students in meaningful proportions, with no single group forming an overwhelming majority.

State testing results on the New York State Testing Program are available for grades three through six in English language arts and math, and for grade five in science. Across all of these tested grades and subjects, proficiency rates are low. In math, third grade shows the highest rate among the tested grades, but it remains well below what most families would consider grade-level mastery; fourth grade math proficiency is especially thin, with nearly all students scoring below the proficient threshold. ELA results follow a similar pattern, with third grade performing somewhat better than the middle grades, while fifth and sixth grade ELA rates are in the single-to-low double digits. Fifth grade science proficiency is very low. Taken together, the school's overall proficiency index places it in the bottom quartile relative to districts in Monroe County, a positioning that parents should weigh carefully and that warrants a direct conversation with school leadership about academic supports, intervention structures, and what the school is doing to move these numbers. A social studies result from a much earlier school year appears in the data but is too dated to be meaningful here.

Chronic absenteeism and graduation data are not applicable because the school does not serve high school grades. IEP and English learner population counts were not reported in the data provided, so the picture of student support services is incomplete; families of students with disabilities or English learners would want to ask those questions directly.

The school is part of a district undergoing significant structural change. Rochester City School District publicly reported carrying out its largest reorganization in decades beginning in the 2024-25 school year, closing more than a dozen schools and reestablishing a middle-school structure with grade-level realignment. School 5-John Williams, serving through eighth grade, sits within that reconfigured landscape, which means families should confirm current feeder patterns, enrollment boundaries, and which high school students transition to after eighth grade. The district also publicly reported a notable budget contraction tied to the end of federal COVID-relief funds, with a reduction in staff positions and enrollment continuing to decline, factors that bear on how many staff and what programming a school like this can sustain.

Rochester itself is a city that has been working through an extended period of reinvestment after population loss. The neighborhood around North Plymouth Avenue is a working urban setting with access to a bus transit network, an Olmsted-designed park system, a downtown central library, and a city that publicly reports new affordable housing development and adaptive-reuse residential projects as part of a downtown revitalization effort. The county housing market has seen home values and rents rise year over year, though prices remain well below the state median, making the area more affordable than most of New York State. Monroe County's market shows active demand, with homes typically going under contract within a few weeks.

For a family evaluating School 5-John Williams, the clearest picture the data offers is a school with a high-need student body, low state assessment proficiency across the tested grades, and a district context that is in active transition. Families who are drawn to the school for its location or community would be well served by asking the school directly about its instructional model, how it identifies and supports students who are behind grade level, and what the post-eighth-grade pathway looks like given the district's recent reorganization.

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Academic performance

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

Math

Grade 326%

School 26% · District 25% · ▲ 1 pts above district

▼ 33 pts below state median · ▼ 20 pts below county median

Grade 42%

School 2% · District 17% · ▼ 15 pts below district

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

Grade 517%

School 17% · District 13% · ▲ 4 pts above district

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

Grade 614%

School 14% · District 18% · ▼ 5 pts below district

▼ 31 pts below state median · ▼ 11 pts below county median

English language arts

Grade 328%

School 28% · District 22% · ▲ 7 pts above district

▼ 24 pts below state median · ▼ 15 pts below county median

Grade 46%

School 6% · District 19% · ▼ 13 pts below district

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

Grade 511%

School 11% · District 19% · ▼ 8 pts below district

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

Grade 620%

School 20% · District 20%

▼ 26 pts below state median · ▼ 8 pts below county median

Science

Grade 54%

School 4% · District 14% · ▼ 10 pts below district

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

Social studies

Grade 582%

School 82% · district not reported

▼ 9 pts below state median · ▼ 11 pts below county median

This schoolROCHESTER CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT, 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.

Proficiency by household income

English language arts

Grade 8Lower-income18%Higher-income55%37 pp gap

Mathematics

Grade 3Lower-income27%Higher-income20%6 pp gap

Grade 7Lower-income11%Higher-income0%11 pp gap

Grade 8Lower-income0%Higher-income0%0 pp gap