The Assembly version, meanwhile, usefully proposes financial incentives to teachers who volunteer to work in low-achieving schools.

Klein asked Fryer if he might be interested in expanding his incentive experiment into 15 or so low-achieving schools.

"Those with not all the information and in low-achieving schools, this sounds appealing to them, to take students out and have them go to Catholic schools," he said.

Conservatives welcomed the tax credit as advancing school choice but said it did nothing to promote greater accountability in low-achieving schools.

In 2010, Burgard was placed on New York State's list of consistently low-achieving high schools in the state.

Among the most vocal supporters of annualization, as it is called, are the principals of the some of the city's most troubled, low-achieving high schools.

P.S. 41's classrooms are not overcrowded because "poor and low-achieving schools" qualify for more Federal aid.

"Very few students go from a low-achieving school to one where achievement is high."

Research from the charter sector indicates that in order to realize the full potential of restarting low-achieving schools, states/districts should:

The city's school system, now under the authority of a chief executive appointed by Mayor Richard M. Daley, intervenes forcefully when it identifies a low-achieving school.