I always wanted a chance to help plan a perfect school, and now I'm getting my chance. Well, maybe it won't be perfect -- public schools in New York City rarely are. I'm optimistic that this new high school, due to open in Fall 2010, will help fill a pent-up...

If our mayor and state senators could stop calling each other names, they might see that they are actually quite close to an agreement on a reasonable law that would keep mayoral control of the city's schools while adding some long overdue checks and balances.

Parents and elected...

When officials at P.S. 123, an ordinary neighborhood school in Harlem, were forced to call the police this month to keep a charter school from taking over its classrooms, I was reminded how charter schools make it harder for neighborhood schools to succeed.

Some time ago, I visited P.S. 42...

The city boasts that nearly two-thirds of high school students graduated on time in 2008, a dramatic increase from 2002 when barely half graduated. But are the standards for graduating so low that the diplomas are meaningless, as skeptics claim?

Yes and no. The rising graduation rates reflect real gains,...

I've long been a fan of small schools, and there's much to admire in the 200 new small high schools that New York City has created since 2002. But there's a dark side as well. A new report (disclosure: I am one of the authors) shows that the success...