Good schools in Manhattan?

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Almost all schools in district 2 are good to excellent. You can't really go wrong. I think 198 may be at the bottom but they have a very good GT program and it's bringing the school up in ranking.

Oh you had lots of questions. No you cannot choose any school. You go to your zoned school unless you test into the gifted program. GT is not always better and most times you have to commute and parents prep so too many kids get into it. You'll probably find as many educated and smart children in your local school in a good district as GT. They test these kids at 4 yo. Doesn't really show their future ability and they seem to all get into the same middle schools and high schools. The good thing about citywides (which you need to get top numbers on the GT test and then lottery in) is that you can stay through middle school. I wouldn't look too much at this year's scores since they are using a new system and even most of the best schools showed poorly. There is a big fight over this. I know nothing about D3 butt here are a bunch of really good schools there as well.

insideschools.org is another good one that has your maps. District 2 is the Upper East and Manhattan south of 59th St- has most of the best schools: PS6, PS158, PS290, PS151 in the Upper East, PS41 in West Village, PS234 PS150 PS89 in Tribeca. District 1 (Upper West) also has excellent ones; PS9, PS87. Those are roughly the top 10- someone else might draw the line at top 20 or top 30.

The 3 G&T citywide schools you test into are Anderson (Upper West), LowerLab (Upper East), NEST (Lower East).

Good district 3 schools include: PS87, 199, and 9, and 452 is a new seemingly good one. Others are improving as well, but it varies. As previous poster mentioned, there is a citywide GT at Anderson too.

NY is big, you have to be more specific if you mean Manhattan, $4-10K for a 2 bedroom, or the rest of NYC, NYC Metro where the same apartments are closers to 1/2 the price.

Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village is a great place to raise kids and parts of it are zoned for PS40, one of the best Elementary Schools in the City. The zoning for this school recently changed and not all buildings are zoned for PS40 these days,

You are ultimately asking for a summary of the situation of what schools are good, what are the rules etc etc so you can be in good shape for the children. It's a full length discussion with many permutations and best to hire one of the school consultants on the phone for an hour or two. There are a few who are very well known and easy to find. It's a few hundred bucks and very well spent. You will be sorely disappointed if you make your decision based on what you find online and on here. There are certain schools being torn down, others being built and zones being changed. There are also waitlist issues. Many people move in to a place only to be quite let down. Ignore this advice at your own peril.

You should definitely do a lot of research, visit neighborhoods and schools and draw your own conclusions. www.insideschools.org is also a great resource but I will stress, its one angle/opinion. Definitely do your homework (pun intentional)