Of his former boss, New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Checker Finn says: "There was also something oppositional, even countercyclical, about Pat that tended to place him athwart the conventional wisdom and regnant political attitudes of the day."...

Dennis Bunyan showed up for his first-semester senior English class at Wadleigh Secondary School in Harlem so rarely that, as he put it, “I basically didn’t attend.”...

We do agree: Violence is not the essential reason that schools are unsuccessful. We agree that violence is not caused by schools, and that in every community the schools are the safest environment that students are likely to encounter...

Three-quarters of eighth-graders in New York City's public schools cannot write proficiently, a problem demonstrated by more than two-thirds of students statewide, according to results from a federally administered test released yesterday...