Big gains in the Big Apple.

• Author: Garland, Sarah
• Position: NEW YORK CITY

Last fall, the New York City public schools granted Justin Skeete, a twenty-year-old dropout from a crime-ridden section of Coney Island, a third and last chance to graduate from high school. Once he turned twenty-one, he would be too old. His new school, Liberation Diploma Plus High School, was taking a risk: Justin arrived with a bad attitude. He cursed out teachers and fellow students. He didn't care about homework. His odds of finishing looked bleak, but Liberation, with a tiny student population of fewer than 200, was prepared for students like Justin.

One of several new last-chance high schools opened by the city in recent years, the school had a striking track record in graduating students that other schools had given up on. Justin's original high school was Lincoln, a traditional school in Coney Island with more than 2,500 students. Although he came in with high test scores on eighth-grade exams, after a few months at Lincoln he lost interest. He showed up every day, but slept through classes or wandered the halls. He failed ninth grade and returned for more of the same the next year. During his third year, he moved into an alternative school housed in the Lincoln building where he took evening classes. He earned five credits, but he didn't like the teachers. He started cutting and soon dropped out.

Justin was working two jobs, at McDonald's and Home Depot, when a cousin told him about Liberation. Justin was skeptical, but he liked the sound of the place. His cousin described the school as "just like a family"--the opposite of his former school.

After an intensive joint effort by counselors, teachers, and the school's principal, April Leong, to reach him, Justin settled in at Liberation. The teachers wrote lesson plans that incorporated the diverse cultures of their students and connected classwork to careers. The administrators balanced strict discipline with an open-door policy that allowed students from rough neighborhoods like Justin's to stay late at school and off the streets and away from potential trouble. Within a few months, Justin's grades had risen to As and Bs.

Leong says the school's philosophy is discovering "who the kid is, and what they need." Justin began meeting once a week with counselors from a nonprofit connected to the school. Soon, he was behaving better and, in June, he graduated. "Before I got here, I can't really say I tried," Justin says. "I felt like nobody cared."

Justin's turnaround is part of a bigger transformation in New York City, the largest school district in the nation. In 2009, the city pushed its four-year graduation rate to 63 percent, up from 47 percent in 2005, according to the state. By the city's calculations, which count GEDs as diplomas, the graduation rate rose from 51 percent in 2002 to 68 percent last year.

More students are also hanging on after four years: more than 65 percent of the students who remain for five or six years eventually graduate, according to state figures. White students are much more likely to graduate than blacks and Hispanics, but everyone is graduating at higher rates. Students are learning more as well. The percentage of graduates earning the more demanding state Regents diploma grew significantly.

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New York's schools have all the challenges that we associate with urban schools, only more so: almost 80 percent of the city's 1.1 million students are poor enough to qualify for a reduced-price lunch. Roughly the same percentage are black and Hispanic. A tenth are special education students, and close to 15 percent are still learning English. All of those groups have an elevated risk of dropping out.

Some critics have questioned New York's improvement numbers, but even the most conservative calculations show unprecedented progress after decades of stagnation. The New York rate is especially dramatic considering that, on average, only about half the students graduate in large cities. In Los Angeles and Las Vegas, graduation rates have fallen. The city has made many missteps, but education reformers, including those in the Obama administration, have looked to New York as a model for addressing the dropout crisis. It seems that New York, the nation's largest city and school district, offers potential solutions to an intractable problem that has primarily plagued big cities.

In July 2002, Mayor Michael Bloomberg stunned New York City with his choice for the new schools chancellor. Joel Klein was an antitrust lawyer, an old hand at breaking up monopolies. Bloomberg, who had recently wrested control of the city schools from the board of education, wanted someone willing to remake the dysfunctional school district.

A day after he was appointed, Klein phoned the woman who would lead the transformation. Michele Cahill was a program officer at the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and, at the time, she was running an experiment in New York City funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates...