Daily News | More New York City public school students are considered “proficient readers” after two years of major curriculum reforms, according to state test scores released Monday.

About 56.3% of third through eighth-graders met the state’s bar for proficiency on English Language Arts exams in the spring — a 7.2 percentage-point increase since the year before. The results erased what officials referred to as last year’s “implementation dip” as students and teachers adjusted to the new curriculum.

In math, 56.9% of students scored proficient or better, up by 3.5 percentage points.

With the major gains, the city’s students slightly outperformed the state in both reading and math. The Adams administration touted the proficiency rates as the system’s highest in more than a decade, though experts caution against making comparisons to pre-2023 data, when ELA and math tests were aligned to new standards.

Among the most promising signs in Monday’s data were great strides by the city’s youngest test takers. Third-grade students, who learned to read under the new regime and were spared COVID-19 school lockdowns, saw their ELA scores rise by 12.9 percentage points.

Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children of New York, called third-graders’ advances on reading exams a particularly “hopeful signal that we are headed in the right direction.”

“At the same time,” Sweet said, “the continued disparities by economic need, race/ethnicity, and disability status make clear that many students need extra support to become strong readers.”