The Board of Education yesterday released reading rankings of public elementary and middle schools citywide — revealing wide disparities even among schools with nearly identical numbers of poor and immigrant kids.
The overall rankings for the city-administered tests — taken by students in grades 3, 5, 6 and 7 — rate schools from best to worst.
The city-contracted tests were given last April, and the results were recalculated upward last fall after the board discovered that its testing company made scoring errors.
City officials yesterday also released results of the state reading tests given to the city’s fourth- and eighth-graders.
The city-test report also compares schools to others with similar demographics, factoring in the number of poor and immigrant students with limited English proficiency.
In Manhattan, for example, PS 51 and PS 126 have nearly an identical concentration of disadvantaged students. More than 80 percent are eligible for free lunch and more than 20 percent speak limited English.
But the students are worlds apart in reading.
At PS 51 on Manhattan’s West Side, 68 percent of the students read at or above grade level, according to city school report cards released yesterday.
That is a whopping 25 points higher than other schools with a similar rate of low-income and limited-English-proficient students, a board analysis shows.
By comparison, only 36 percent of students at PS 126 in Chinatown read at or above grade level, 32 points lower than its uptown counterpart and 7 points “below average” for schools with comparable demographics.
“We have a very structured 21/2-hour literacy program,” said PS 51 Principal Barbara Gambino.
She said the schedule permits two teachers to instruct smaller groups of students on reading and writing.
The school also has four hours of after-school reading programs a week, and started a summer school program two years ago.
“I have fabulous teachers. They work very hard,” she said.
Meanwhile, PS 126 hopes to pick up its lagging reading scores, said its new principal, Daria Rigney, who took the helm in June.
“Our school really needed a lot of help and we’re getting it. We’re going to do much better this year,” Rigney said.
She has brought in “master teachers” to help others, and the school has gotten more money to buy books and other supplies.
The results disappointed Interim Chancellor Harold Levy.
“Too many of our students read below grade level,” said Levy, who vows to hold administrators and teachers responsible for student performance.
Forty-eight percent of students in read at or above grade level in the city test.
The rankings come on the heels of the board’s move to eliminate social promotion. As many as 320,000 students may be required to go to summer school — or fail — if they don’t pick up their grades this spring.