These Schools Mean Business

National competitiveness is the topic of the moment, but so much of the debate about it is conducted at 35,000 feet, the policy level. In late March I visited a place in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where change is happening on the ground. Down the street from public-housing blocks is a new open-admission public school called P-Tech, or Pathways in Technology Early College High School. Launched last September, it's a partnership of the New York City department of education, the New York City College of Technology, the City University of New York and IBM, whose head of corporate social responsibility, Stanley Litow,...