Obama vs. Education
It was 50 years ago this June that George Wallace, the Democratic governor of Alabama, made his infamous “stand in the schoolhouse door” to prevent two black students from enrolling at an all-white...
View ArticleObama vs. Education
It was 50 years ago this June that George Wallace, the Democratic governor of Alabama, made his infamous “stand in the schoolhouse door” to prevent two black students from enrolling at an all-white...
View ArticleThe Anti-School-Reform Canon
Diane Ravitch, the prophet of education’s anti-reform crowd, has a new book out on September 17. Reign of Error, the sequel to her hugely successful Death and Life of the Great American School System...
View ArticleThe Most Interesting School District in America?
When it comes to K–12 education, the nation’s most important election this November may be in Douglas County, Colorado. While most of today’s eye-catching education fights involve high-profile contests...
View ArticleThe Decline of College
For the last 70 years, American higher education was assumed to be the pathway to upward mobility and a rich shared-learning experience. Young Americans for four years took a common core of classes,...
View ArticleHeralded Report on the Humanities Falls Flat
On August 15, in the middle of a ratings desert on Comedy Central, Richard H. Brodhead, the president of Duke University, gamely pitched the humanities in his five-minute close-up with Stephen...
View ArticleRace-Based Admissions after Fisher
It’s depressing that, nearly six decades after Brown v. Board of Education, the legality and morality of racial discrimination in education continues to be a contested issue.Consider: Last month the...
View ArticleEducation Today
‘One of my most treasured possessions is a picture taken many years ago when I was a young father,” William J. Bennett writes in the introduction to his Book of Man: Readings on the Path to Manhood....
View ArticleBind Us Together? Not in Public Schools
The ongoing federal shutdown offers a powerful lesson about public schools, and it’s not just that you can’t count on checks from D.C. It is something much more basic: When government makes decisions,...
View ArticleThe Education Debit Card
‘The public-school system has no ability to handle Shawn’s sensory needs,” says Jennifer Doucet, mother of the Arizona fourth-grader. “We needed a program that understood him, that [we] could gear...
View ArticleDon’t Leave Responsible Parents Behind
One of the remarkable things about contemporary education reform may be its lack of interest in responsible parenting. In recent years, an intense focus on closing racial and economic achievement gaps...
View ArticleLiberal Education vs. Liberalist Education
Among those hit hardest by the prolonged downturn in the economy are recent college graduates, who face both high unemployment rates and a high debt burden from college expenses. This fact has rightly...
View ArticleThe Wannabe Oppressed
What do America’s college students want? They want to be oppressed. More precisely, a surprising number of students at America’s finest colleges and universities wish to appear as victims — to...
View ArticleShow Us the Money
A bank would never grant a loan to a business that failed to disclose its overhead. So why do taxpayers and state legislators consistently vote to increase spending on public schools without knowing...
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Meet the ‘Blue Collar Ivies’
Editor’s Note: The following is an adapted excerpt of Choosing the Right College 2014–15: The Inside Scoop on Elite Schools and Outstanding Lesser-Known Institutions.While the price of tuition has been...
View ArticleESAs Are Changing the Game
‘A blind student in Arizona gets about $21,000 a year,” says Marc Ashton, whose son, Max, is legally blind. That $21,000 represents what Arizona spends to educate a student such as Max in the...
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Time for a Reboot
Americans are ambivalent about testing, standards, and accountability in their children’s schools. This is clear from survey results that swing wildly depending on how, exactly, the question is phrased...
View ArticleIn Defense of For-Profit Colleges
Unless you follow education policy closely, you probably don’t know who Representative John Kline is. But just a few weeks ago, lefty talk-show host and comedian Bill Maher declared the district of the...
View ArticleThe Left’s Legal War on Children
Nearly 60 years after Milton Friedman proposed a system of universal school choice in his seminal essay “The Role of Government in Education,” his vision is more popular than ever — and opponents of...
View ArticleA Real Education Market
In mid June, the Department of Education put for-profit Corinthian Colleges out of business. Citing the company’s failure to respond to claims it had fudged job-placement data and falsified attendance...
View ArticleSchools: The New Social-Welfare Centers
There are many reasons that our country’s public-school system fails so many American kids. Unions protect incompetent teachers (and even defend convicted child molesters), and our location-based...
View ArticleKnowledge Makes a Comeback
I began writing about education 20 years ago, in part because of the disturbing instructional practices I was seeing at my children’s New York City elementary school. When my oldest son was accepted...
View ArticleWhat’s Right about Common Core
I confess I’m somewhat bewildered by the passionate arguments over the Common Core State Standards. Getting in high dudgeon about K–12 learning standards, which say almost nothing about what kids do in...
View ArticleArne Duncan’s Office of Civil Rights: Six Years Of Meddling
At his confirmation hearing in 2009, Senator Lamar Alexander famously told Arne Duncan that “President-elect Obama has made several distinguished cabinet appointments, but in my view of it all, I think...
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Teaching Reform
Those who fear that the big problem with America’s schools is the teachers who work in them would be heartened by spending a little time at an Educators 4 Excellence (E4E) conclave. Sydney Morris and...
View ArticleAffirmative Discrimination in Higher Education
Racial and ethnic admission preferences will probably have to be pried from the cold, dead fingers of university officials, but the pressure to end this affirmative discrimination continues.For...
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