(A) Education

By Robert Pondiscio – Students’ personal choices matter. And so do the choices made by the education reform movement, which is steadfastly unwilling to address or even acknowledge the role that family structure and stability plays in students’ life outcomes. If a child in poverty graduates from high school, finds full-time employment, gets married, and has children, in that order, Rowe tirelessly pointed out—the chance they will remain in poverty as an adult drops to a mere 2 percent. “There is no public policy that comes even close to those kinds of results,” … Read More

By John M. Ellis – Colleges need to be accredited; state universities answer to governing boards. Accrediting agencies and governing boards are created through a political process. What if voters were to insist that those agencies demand answers to some elementary questions? …How can a department of political science that excludes half the spectrum of viable political ideas be competent to offer degrees in the field? How can a history curriculum be taught competently when only one extremist attitude to social and political questions is present in a department? …How can these extraordinary deficiencies deserve either accreditation, or support by state and federal funds?… Read More

By Wilfred M. McClay and Kathleen O’Toole – Parents are appalled by the reduction of American history to an endless exercise in identity politics and moral accusation. They fear that the study of the American past — rather than providing the young with a sense of something larger than themselves — has become something deeply negative: a way of separating us from our past and a weapon used to sow shame and resentment, and even hatred and despair, in the hearts of tomorrow’s citizens. This is a recipe for disaster. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Good, honest curriculum is not only possible; it’s come to pass… Read More