New York Today: Tested - NYTimes.com But those tests are weighing on the city on Wednesday. The results were released this morning and show steep declines. Only half as many students passed the math section this year as last year. The number who passed the reading section fell by 20 percentage points. The tests are based on tougher criteria. Still, the drop could tarnish the mayor's education record. The schools chancellor had called a decline inevitable. The teachers" union said the Bloomberg administration had not prepared teachers for the new standards. Mayoral candidates are chiming in with criticism, too. But the federal education secretary, Arne Duncan, said that New Yorkers should "absolutely not be alarmed" by a drop in scores. Read the full story about the test scores. Here's what else you need to know for Wednesday. Still cool, with a high of 79, but less delightful: clouds and humidity building, and rain or thunderstorms likely by evening. Rain in the picture till Saturday. Dig out that umbrella. Mass Transit [10:52] No delays reported. Roads [10:52] Clearing up. Alternate-side parking is suspended today, Thursday and Friday for Id al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday that ends the monthlong fast of Ramadan. Meters must still be fed. On the campaign trail: Evening mayoral-candidate forums in Canarsie, Brooklyn, and Jamaica, Queens. Bill de Blasio visits a metal fabricator in Williamsburg. John C. Liu goes to a Hindu festival in Kensington, Brooklyn. The city Campaign Finance Board will unveil a mobile app that makes it easier to register to vote, give money and communicate with campaigns. A judge in Brooklyn will hold a hearing on whether to shut Long Island College Hospital. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden will announce this year's "Greenest Block" winner on a leafy street somewhere in the borough at 10 a.m. The city will spray pesticide in parts of Queens and Staten Island for the West Nile virus on Wednesday night and Thursday morning. The salsa legend Rubén Blades performs at the Damrosch Park Bandshell at Lincoln Center at 7:30 p.m. Free, seating limited, get there early Bilal, the Philadelphia-based neo-soul songwriter, plays at Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem. Vivian Green opens. Free movies: "Sugar," about the travails of a young Dominican baseball pitcher, at Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens (7 p.m.). "Speed" in McCarren Park in Williamsburg (dusk). "ParaNorman" on Staten Island at Faber Park (8 p.m.). "The Blind Side" at Baisley Pond Park in Queens (8 p.m.). Test your knowledge of Staten Island's untapped cultural and natural resources at a city-sponsored trivia contest at the Arsenal in Central Park. Interestingly, the contest is called "I'd Tap That." Free, R.S.V.P. recommended The elite Horace Mann School paid more than $1 million to settle sex abuse claims. A gay couple recounts getting attacked on the street by a group of men in broad daylight outside Madison Square Garden. New York Times Op-Docs An enterprising Brooklyn man has made a home out of a stylishly remodeled Dumpster. HGTV via Daily Intel Thirty miles from New York City, there's a village where 93 percent of the residents speak a language other than English. And it ain't Spanish, bubbeleh. Mets beat Colorado, 3-2. Yanks lose to White Sox, 3-2. The Daily News reports this morning that 25 pay phones in old-style booths at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn have been carted away. Some may marvel that so many phone booths still exist at all. But if Superman were to show up tomorrow, he would still find plenty of places to change outfits, almost all indoors. Mark Thomas, who lovingly tracks this vanishing species on his Payphone News site, estimated the city's phone booth population "in the dozens." They include these beauties at a location he would not divulge. Other booths have taken on new duties. In the John Jay school complex in Brooklyn, New York Today spotted one that is now home to a postal-service mailbox. See photo. Kind of like a museum of endangered communication technology. Javier C. Hernández, Michaelle Bond, Nicole Higgins DeSmet, Mona El-Naggar and E.C. Gogolak contributed reporting.