Albany Superintendent Eva Joseph, quoted in today's Times Union, says unruly students in Albany schools become more disruptive when they are "clustered." School officials, who have long argued there was nothing systemic about the recent outbursts of violence in the district, are now talking about adding satellite classrooms outside of regular schools for chronically disruptive students.

It is not clear whether anyone will accuse these public "satellite classrooms" of being untested experiments that are draining badly-needed funds from the public schools. Maybe, just maybe, people are coming to regard "public education" as educating the public, whether or not it happens in the old, traditional classrooms.