Most of the folks who could have answered your questions were out of their offices on Friday, but I am working on getting responses and as soon as I do I will share them with you. Until I can find...

It's the middle of school vacation week, which means it's the perfect time for the DOE to send out important letters -- letters that some Insideschools readers consider potentially life-altering....

Parent coordinators are increasingly unavailable by phone, according to a report released recently by the Public Advocate's office, where staffers called 100 parent coordinators after school hours,...

Today's word from the DOE: "Letters haven't gone out yet. They will go out later this week," according to a DOE spokesperson who just wrote to me. Our collective mailbox check can continue --...

Bad news for critics of the citywide cell phone ban in schools: Yesterday, a state appeals court upheld the ban, saying that "the department has a rational interest in having its teachers and staff...

After great uncertainty about dates -- at first it was supposed to be the end of March, then April 18, then the end of this month -- we're hearing that the first G&T letters have gone home....

Ever since New York Sun columnist Lenore Skenazy wrote a column earlier this month about why she let her 9-year-old son travel alone on the subway, parents around the city have had little else to...

After all of the debate on this blog last week over school admissions and the headaches the process causes, I was wondering whether it is actually getting harder to get into desirable schools in...

Here's one way to deal with the disheartening and overwhelming school admissions process in New York City: don't apply. A growing number of the city's families who are choosing to homeschool are...

On one of our earlier posts about the changes to G&T admissions, Insideschools blog reader Crimson Wife commented: The mess in the NYC G&T programs and the ridiculous competition for...

At about half of all city high schools, the only foreign language offered is Spanish, creating a challenge when, as is often the case, many students are already fluent Spanish speakers, according...

Yoav Gonen has a short piece in today's Post with more details on the numbers of students applying and qualifying for G&T classes for the fall. His numbers (which vary from those reported in...

The Times has some interesting district-by-district G&T numbers in its coverage today of the sudden change in G&T admissions criteria. First, the Times is reporting that 3,000 children...

After months of bad budget news from both the state and the city, here's a big piece of excellent news: the State Assembly just passed a budget that restores all of the cuts the state had made to...

Confirming rumors floating earlier this week, the DOE has just announced that it will guarantee seats in gifted and talented programs in their entry grades to all children scoring at the 90th...

Over at the Insideschools high school forum, user LeonDMatthew describes what happened earlier this week when the mobile scanning unit showed up at his school: I came into school today and was...

Five years after the Leadership Academy was created to train new principals, the DOE is going to start to pick up the bill for it. Until now, the experimental program was supported with private...

Oops. Administrators at the Bronx High School for Performance and Stagecraft are in hot water with the DOE after they allowed the Barack Obama campaign to film students discussing a class...

Man, the DOE just can't keep its mind made up about anything, can it? When DOE officials announced the new policy for admission to gifted and talented programs earlier this year, they were emphatic...

Last week, all 85,000 8th graders who applied for public high school found out where they were matched. This process is nerve-wracking for all, but it's worst for the nearly 8,000 children who...

There is one way to get answers and explanations about the middle school choice process. It requires taking a deep breath, agreeing not to try to game the system and ignoring the "I heard this"...

When the public middle school search began this fall, I was not going to be one of those anxiety ridden parents, whispering rumors and comparing notes and test scores of kids who get in. After...

Last week was a scary one for two Brooklyn high schools. On Thursday, John Dewey High School was locked down for three hours after a student dropped his gun in class, then picked it up and fled....

For many years, the city's specialized high schools have operated a summer program for disadvantaged students who score close to their admissions cutoff on the Specialized High School Admission...

Less than a year after struggling to land a location, Khalil Gibran International Academy could become a vagabond again. The DOE is hoping to move it to PS 287 in Fort Greene for the fall, even...