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In a unanimous ruling, an appeals court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the teacher’s union and other groups that claimed the city misused more than $700 million in state aid between 2007 and 2010 that was supposed to reduce class size.

A non-profit group has found that the city's financial bonus program for teachers hasn't improved student achievement.

After the discovery of toxic PCBs, New York City school officials have closed two classrooms at PS 36 on Staten Island. In a letter to Michael Mulgrew, the head of the teachers union, Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott said the measure was taken as a "precaution," and that the rooms would remain closed "until we are certain there is no health concern."

Governor Andrew Cuomo has named many of the people he is bringing in to run the administration and state agencies. Many departments and agencies are facing potentially deep cuts to the services they provide. Here's the It's A Free Country guide to the people who will be enacting Cuomo's "rightsizing," in order of their agency budget size.

»» Also check out our guide to Cuomo's Team in the Governor's Office

An advocacy group is accusing the city's Department of Education of manipulating data to make it seem like schools have more space than they actually have.

This week, the city is expected to announce the fate of more than 50 schools that could be closed because of low performance. Some of them could be phased-out starting next fall, while others could get federal funds to make improvements.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's choice of publishing executive Cathie Black dominated Tuesday's monthly meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy, even though the Bloomberg administration insisted the panel was no place for such a discussion.

New York City's Panel for Educational Policy meets tonight, but discussion about Hearst publishing executive Cathie Black becoming the new schools chancellor is not on the agenda.

Sixteen more low-performing city elementary and middle schools are being considered for possible phase-out or turnaround. That brings the total number of schools on the list to 47. The list also includes 19 schools the city had wanted to phase-out starting this fall before a state court found it didn't provide enough community notification.

Watch out this Halloween! Not of ghosts and goblins, but of something far more sinister. Before you swap wigs, hats or masks, consider that they could be carrying an undesirable treat. Lice.

Queens is always growing and it seems its schools are, too. The United Federation of Teachers says several high schools in the city's second most populous borough seem more crowded than usual this fall.

With the teachers union contesting the city's plan to release the names of 12,000 teachers evaluated with student test scores, some academics question the value of such reports.

City Council members gave low marks to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Education Department for this year's drop in test scores. At a City Council Education Committee hearing on Monday, members tangled with officials from the Department of Education.

The city's Department of Education says some former rubber room teachers are planning to file grievances because they don't like their new assignments.

Last spring, the city and the teachers union agreed to close the infamous “rubber rooms” and assign teachers waiting for their disciplinary hearings to work in Department of Education offices. But a few teachers claim it’s not what they expected.

A day before classes begin, dozens of students rallied outside the Department of Education to protest against the behavior of school safety officers. Tenth-grader Angie Hernandez was one of several speakers who say officers talk down to students, and assume the worst.

Chancellor Joel Klein announcing the new progress reports for elementary and middle schools. The chancellor ...

Janette Sadik-Khan and the mysterious ZoZo discuss Summer Streets.

Park Avenue is filled with traffic today, but the scene will be much different on Saturday morning. The city's Summer Streets ...

Mayor Bloomberg has made improving the city's public schools a central theme of his mayoralty and his bid for a third term. But one of his Democratic rivals, Comptroller Bill Thompson, is now questioning Bloomberg's track record.

The Comptroller's office released a withering audit of the city's graduation rates. The report sampled graduates from the class of 2007, in a way that was supposed to be statistically representative of the city. Thompson called the NYC Department of Education "the Enron of education, showing the gains and hiding the losses."

Out of 197 graduates, 36 took the same major subject classes two or more times and received credit for each passing grade. One student failed English 3, for example, but passed English 4 twice and received a credit for each course. Another received two credits for passing Global History 1 two times but this same student didn't take Global History 4.

The audit also found 19 graduates whose transcripts were incomplete. The Department of Education was eventually able to confirm that 17 of those students really did meet graduation requirements based on evidence from their schools. As for receiving credit despite taking the same class twice, the Department's response to the auditors said "what the Comptroller largely identified were repeated course codes, not repeats of the same class."

But Thompson said those answers didn't clear up one big concern:

"There are a number of questions as to what the real graduation rate is. And I don't think that, given the level of documentation with the Department of Education, given the level of documentation on the school level, I'm not sure exactly what the graduation rate is."