New York City is converting a big high school into three smaller high schools. Here’s the plan, which sounds like a recipe for disaster:

Then, a few weeks ago, the department announced its plan for restructuring Lafayette, which now has about 2,100 students, beginning in September 2007. It would contain three new schools — one emphasizing sports management, another focusing on film and music, and a third offering “expeditionary learning” under the aegis of Outward Bound.

Why on earth would a high school emphasize “sports management”? I can only imagine how much TV-watching and iPod-listening will go on at the “film and music” academy. And while Outward Bound is a good program — years ago, my brother took an OB course in Colorado — how will “expeditionary learning” teach kids to read and write and add and subtract? It’s conceivable that a small handful of students will benefit from such specialized programming. The vast majority, however, won’t receive the education in fundamentals that they need at this age. I’d be less critical of all this if the schools were responding to an actual market demand, as determined by the wishes of parents who exercise authentic school choice, but these schools are the command-and-control concoctions of government employees. They will flop.