Public Schools: Teachers Who Give a Damn

For the third straight week, New York City's big school system remained immobilized by a teachers' strike. Ironically, schools in the neighborhood-run Brooklyn district at the center of the controversy were fully open. While police patrolled the streets around Ocean Hill-Brownsville's eight schools, children inside the building benefited from one of the nation's youngest, best-educated and most enthusiastic teaching staffs.

The background of the situation has become unpleasantly familiar to New Yorkers. The city's board of education last year set up a pilot project in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville section to test school decentralization, which would allow "the community"—the parents themselves...