Important Dates - Testing

Elementary and middle school students in New York State take yearly State tests in core academic subjects to assess their mastery of the Common Core Learning Standards. Students’ test results are one of the factors that schools use to decide whether to promote a student to the next grade. Educators also analyze students’ test results to help determine which instructional standards to focus on, and to evaluate their programs.
The links below take you to pages with more information about each particular test that elementary and middle school students take; you can also read more about how subjects are taught in New York City on the Academics page.


English Language Arts (ELA): Students in grades 3-8 take this test on April 11 and 12.
Math: Students in grades 3-8 take this test on May 1 and 2.
Science: Students in grades 4 and 8 take the written test on June 4.

New York State English as a Second Language Test (NYSESLAT): Students in grades K-12 who receive ENL services will take this test on selected days from May 7 to May 18.


Read this parent guide that provides more information on student participation and the State exams. Translated versions are available in Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, French, Hatian Creole, Korean, Spanish, Russian, and Urdu. For more information about the NYS testing program at PS4, please contact the main office or speak to your child's teacher.

ELA Bowl - 2013

To prepare for the NYS English Language Arts Test, students in grades 3, 4 and 5 participated in our annual ELA Bowl!  Hosted by Ms. Thomas, this years' ELA Bowl involved ten multiple choice questions that class representatives had to answer on stage and a writing portion that was done before the competition.  Points were combined and the class with the highest points won a 1st place trophy!

Congratulations to the class winners from each grade and all of the participants!  See photos from the event below.

This photo collage created with Smilebox

2012 ELA Bowl



3rd grade particpants with Ms. Martin

4th grade participants



Twenty-eight students were able to show their reading skills at PS4's annual ELA Bowl, just two weeks before the New York State English Language Arts Exams.  Each class from grades 3-5 was able to choose two representatives that would represent them on our auditoriums stage.  Teams were asked to answer questions after reading a short passage.  They needed to use their reading comprehension skills in order to get the correct answer.

Congratulations to the winners and all participants of the 2012 ELA  Bowl featuring the following students:

• Franchesca M. and Sasha E. (Class 301)
• Xavier P. and Richelle P. (Class 320)
• Ariannis Z. and Yasmely D. (Class 321)
• Angel V. and Yeilin R. (Class 323)
• Nathalie P. and Jennifer A. (Class 324)
• Adriana H, and Shawn T. (Class 401)
• Ashley R. and Jeremy R. (Class 420)
• Andy T. and Eduardo B. (Class 421)
• Daly O. and Josianny G. (Class 423)
• Jonathan R. and Freddy L. (Class 482)
• Shirley V. and Ismael M. (Class 501)
• Judany S. and Xiara R. (Class 520)
• Jaden T. and Byron M. (Class 523)
• Joenmy D. and Govaniel R. (Class 521)



5th grade participants