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February 7, 2024
Elite Colleges Need to Offer Less Affirmation. And Insist on More Work.
Recently, I offered a not-so-sophisticated explanation for the histrionics we’ve seen at elite colleges: too many students are simply aimless, lonely, and bored. Well-meaning concern about the mental and emotional state of…
February 7, 2024
The Past and Future of Education Reform
When the French statesman Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand was asked for his thoughts on the Bourbon royal family in exile, he replied, “Ils n’ont rien appris, ni rien oublié.” They have learned…
January 12, 2024
What is the Utah “Family Miracle”?
…in Utah shows some clouds on the horizon.” The state’s marriage and fertility rates are falling. For instance, as I recently noted in the Deseret News with Patrick Brown and Jenet Erickson, “In 2012,…
December 12, 2023
Virginia’s Gov. Youngkin Offers A Republican Path On Pre-K
The public wins when Democrats and Republicans are both offering principled solutions to pressing challenges. That’s too rarely been the case when it comes to early childhood education. For a…
December 11, 2023
How Public Housing Encourages Single Parenthood and Penalizes Marriage
…point: who are the “families with the lowest incomes”? Here’s who they are not: married couples. Both public and subsidized housing—“brick and mortar” housing projects and housing vouchers, which together…
December 8, 2023
Biden’s Even Worse Version of “Free College”
The Biden administration has abolished the federal student-loan program, at least if a “student-loan program” is one in which students borrow money and then eventually repay it. What’s being erected…
November 21, 2023
Defining Poverty Up
Thirty years ago, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D., N.Y.) wrote a seminal essay titled “Defining Deviancy Down.” He argued that Americans had “become accustomed to alarming levels of crime…
October 23, 2023
Teach Your Children Well
…is better than Candy Land. But anyone who knows Success Academies knows that Moskowitz’s real passion lies with chess. The school starts kids in kindergarten and its students have gone…
October 12, 2023
Blue States Are Getting More Federal Money Than They Should
The late New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan long complained — and commissioned data — about New York’s status as a “donor state,” for sending more in tax dollars to Washington…
October 12, 2023
I Spoke to Arne Duncan About School Reform. Here Are 5 Takeaways
Last week, at the American Enterprise Institute, former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and I sat down to talk about the future of school reform with The New York Times’…