..... [A] close look at the record reveals undeniable improvements in school governance and respectable progress on student achievement. While New York City’s schools are far from perfect and much can be done to build upon the Bloomberg-era reforms, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Fariña should reflect on how far the schools have come before embarking on wholesale changes.....

..... Bloomberg made educational choice a reform priority. The city significantly expanded choice at the middle school and high school levels by creating an application and assignment process.....

..... The city opened 654 new schools during the Bloomberg administration, many of them small, theme-based high schools. By dividing up many of New York’s massive high schools into smaller academies, the administration sought to foster the sense of community that sociologist James Coleman identified as the key to good schools: every teacher and school official knows every student by name. The respected research firm MDRC, in a multiyear study of these small schools, found that their students have a graduation rate 10 percentage points higher than their peers in traditional high schools. More striking, city data show that graduation rates rose from 38 percent at the large high schools in 2002 to 68 percent in the new small schools in the same buildings in 2012.....

....In addition to charters and the smaller theme-based high schools, numerous other schools offering specialized programs have been opened. For example, the number of “career and technical education” (CTE) schools have more than doubled under the Bloomberg administration, from 18 in 2002 to 46 this year. Between 1960 and 2003, no vocational education schools were opened in New York City—“voc ed” had become stigmatized as a dumping ground for less able students. But the city’s new CTE schools are preparing students for some of tomorrow’s best jobs—and are being looked to as a national model for college- and career-readiness. As a result of all these new school options, New York now ranks second in the Brookings Institution’s index of choice and competition for students.....

.....If one takes a fair look at the total record, it’s hard to argue that New York City schools aren’t in a much better place than they were 12 years ago. However, despite all the improvements, less than a third of New York City students, by the city’s own standard, are graduating high school on time and are college- or career-ready. There remains much room for improvement.....

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