New York Daily News

Disturbing, gang-like graffiti is cropping up all over a Brooklyn elementary school, marring a playground, classrooms and two teachers' cars, authorities said.

More than 300 youngsters in parts of Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island were thrilled to receive letters last week saying they tested into gifted kindergarten programs in their district. Too bad their districts don't have gifted kindergarten programs.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has raised such a fuss over recent state legislation prohibiting the use of student standardized test scores in teacher tenure decisions that the casual observer could hardly be faulted for wondering why tenure shouldn't be tied to test scores.

He was handcuffed, hauled out of his kindergarten - and then left sitting home for months without any way to get an education. Dennis Rivera, he's still waiting for a seat at a new school.

Officials are moving to correct an apparent bias in the city's new school letter grades. One of the proposals would give schools points for students who earn special education diplomas but fall short of a Regents diploma.

The head of the City Council's Environmental Protection Committee gave education officials a failing grade Wednesday on their response to calls for testing for PCBs in hundreds of schools.

More than a third of city high schools don't meet the rigorous standards of the No Child Left Behind Act and students who attend them may be entitled to transfer, state officials said.

We cannot afford to give lifetime job security to teachers who haven't helped their students learn. But that's exactly what lawmakers in Albany are considering.

More than 60 school buildings across the Bronx could be contaminated with hazardous levels of toxic chemicals banned for more than 30 years, the Daily News has learned.

Education officials flushed away thousands of dollars by building a kid-sized bathroom at a Bronx elementary school - then deciding to put a new high school there instead.

Though Schools Chancellor Joel Klein announced last fall that spots in coveted elementary gifted classes would go only to children who scored in the top 5% of a new admissions test, his deputy acknowledged Thursday that officials have discussed admitting kids in the top 10%.

My mom gave me an early lesson in school choice. I was going to a school in Harlem that didn't meet standards, so she got me into Public School 87 on the upper West Side.

As schools begin sending out the second annual "learning environment surveys," some administrators are not-so-subtly asking parents, teachers and students to be kind in their comments, according to memos obtained by the Daily News.

Despite concern from some parents, Brooklyn's controversial Arabic-themed school will move into a Fort Greene elementary school next year, officials said.

The Education Department gave a 9% pay raise this month to a controversial British consulting company that performs yearly evaluations of most city schools.