It’s no secret that America’s 564 state and local public pension plans are in serious trouble. Joshua Rauh of Stanford’s Hoover Institution recently put the cumulative underfunding at $3.4 trillion. Less widely known is that the shape of a long-term cure for this deficit has already begun to emerge — along with the unexpected opportunity […]
Solve the Public Pension Crisis with School Choice Read More »
As American parents confront the leftist claim that their children’s beliefs about the world are so distorted by culture and family as to require a dramatic adjustment, it is worth remembering that this isn’t a new argument. Neither is it a new argument that students can be “woken” to a deeper and more “humane” vision
Benjamin Franklin and America’s First “Woke” Curriculum Read More »
We read these days that Americans are increasingly worried automation will soon make their labor obsolete. Although this supposed threat to the employability of millions involves the convergence of multiple technologies – including computer programming, chip design, voice recognition, artificial intelligence, and material science – it is most often identified with the word robot,
Fear of Robots Is the Price of Secularism Read More »
The anti-racism curricula increasingly adopted by America’s K-12 schools contain so much misinformation that the growing backlash against them has predictably focused on course content. Teaching children that the U.S. Constitution was designed by whites to enslave minorities, that modern scientific concepts are tainted by racism, that “right” math answers are a slight to people
Woke Schooling Is Psychological Child Abuse Read More »
Like politicians of every age, both Republicans and Democrats have for decades complained about government overspending when out of office, only to resume rewarding their own supporters once back in power—almost always by amounts far above tax revenues. Now, as the resulting public debt ominously exceeds our annual GDP, the question naturally arises: Have we
Secular Institutions Push America into a Debt Crisis Read More »
In the United States, the interest groups most strongly associated with neo-Marxist ideas would have been forced to operate more efficiently long ago, had they not assumed the mantle of social justice warriors. What American leftists like to describe as their commitment to greater fairness and equality almost always turns out to be a superficial
Secular Progressivism Doesn’t March Through Institutions — It Props Up Failing Ones Read More »
The argument for school choice—letting parents decide how to spend the public money allocated for their child’s education—has until now rested on two well-documented findings. First, that creating a K-12 education marketplace tends to improve the academic performance of all schools within its region, public and private. And second, that this increase in quality typically comes in
The Immorality of Public School Monopolies in Today’s Political Environment Read More »
Comparing today’s high school education to a 50-year-old mainframe computer, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates once said that our schools were created “to meet the needs of another age.” He predicted that, until we reinvent them, “we will keep limiting – even ruining – the lives of millions of Americans every year.” Interestingly, this is
The Other Good Reason for School Choice Read More »
A recently released school reform study in New Jersey promises timely fiscal as well as educational benefits, and not just for the Garden State. Some quick background helps us appreciate the study’s nationwide implications. In 2011, Arizona became the first state to adopt what is called an education savings account, or ESA, policy. ESA plans
When Public Funding for Religious Schools Is a Government Windfall Read More »
One of the most striking cultural developments to come out of the COVID pandemic is the greater willingness of families to experiment with alternative schooling. Wishing to provide their children with a more stable learning environment than the erratic re-openings of conventional public and private schools, many parents have joined with neighbors to create collaborative
Religion’s Critical Contribution to the Pod and Micro-school Revolution Read More »