In his campaign for Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio positioned himself as the candidate most determined to break with the legacy of the outgoing Michael Bloomberg administration. Voters responded enthusiastically, handing de Blasio a nearly 50-point margin of victory in the November 2013 election. De Blasio, a Democrat, interpreted the win…

Education's political landscape has shifted dramatically over the past year. To the consternation of most school-district officials, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos used the bully pulpit to promote charter schools, vouchers, and tax credits for private-school scholarships. To the distress of teachers unions, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down…

IN 1959, six years before he authored the study that would remake America's segregated public schools, James S. Coleman found himself face to face with a very different foe: the inscrutable desires, evolving tastes, and secret motivations of the post--World War II American teenager. At the time, Coleman was head of Johns Hopkins University's…