City officials are crowing over gains on the 2025 reading and math exams, but the state lowered the passing benchmarks for some students — raising questions about boasts of substantial academic progress, experts told The Post.

The tests, given statewide to NYC public school kids in grades 3 through 8, required third graders to get just 57% of questions correct on the English Language Arts exam to pass, down from 60% last year.

Fourth graders had to get 56% right, down from 65%, and 6th graders had to answer 57% correctly, down from 63%, according to a stunning analysis by the Times-Union . 4

The test-tinkering resulted in big improvements in NYC. Third-graders showed an 8.4 point increase in reading, with a whopping 63.6 % of students showing proficiency on the exam compared to 5

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