New York City's public-school system — America's largest — has made headlines of late thanks to bitter political infighting between Democrats over education policy. Fresh battles have broken out over charters, school closings and the financing of pre-K schooling, with Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo facing off in Albany. It's a gripping drama, but one that misses the true story about improvements in public-education outcomes — and the grass-roots reform movement that has made such positive changes possible in New York and across the country.

Most Americans don't realize that national high-school graduation rates, after nearly 30 years of steady decline, have reversed. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the national graduation rate rose to 80% in 2011 from 71% in 2000. This is a 35-year high, and it is hard to overstate the importance of this upturn.

This good news is tempered by recent data about median household income, the most widely used proxy for living standards. In 2013, the Census Department reported that it slipped again to $51,017. In inflation-adjusted terms, this is 6% below the 2007 level, before the financial crisis, and a level which we last saw in the late 1980s......

......Further, a study of New York schools conducted by the research firm MDRC demonstrates that smaller public high schools raised graduation rates by 10 percentage points. We need more smaller schools, smaller learning units in large schools, and wraparound community services for weaker schools. Our program, New Visions for Public Schools, has opened almost 100 small public high schools in New York City over the past 10 years.....

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