Free Republic

Critics of the SAT and other standardized testing are disregarding the data. The College Board—the standardized testing behemoth that develops and administers the SAT and other tests—has redesigned its flagship product again. Beginning in spring 2016, the writing section will be optional, the reading section will no longer test “obscure” vocabulary words, and the math section will put more emphasis on solving problems with real-world relevance. Overall, as the College Board explains on its website, “The redesigned SAT will more closely reflect the real work of college and career, where a flexible command of evidence—whether found in text or graphic...

Activists with the radical pro-affirmative action group, By Any Means Necessary, staged a protest on Tuesday featuring a black Detroit high school student who was denied admission to the University of Michigan. The student, Brooke Kimbrough, claimed UM rejected her because of her “morals,” and not her below-average ACT score of 23. (The average U-M student has a score between 28 and 32.) “I believe that I have been rejected because of the morals that I stand for,” said Kimbrough, according to Fox 2 news. “I will take back my freedom as a tool to help others. I have...

Columbia University officials said today they were investigating what happened Wednesday night when protesters stormed a stage where the founder of a conservative anti-immigration group was trying to deliver an address, an incident that ended in chairs being overturned, and charges that students violated the speaker’s freedom of speech. The incident, at Columbia’s Roone Arledge Auditorium, reflects the strong feelings surround the immigration debate in the United States. It erupted just minutes into a speech by Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minuteman Project, a self-appointed band of civilian border patrols that have focused mostly on preventing illegal immigration from...

Why Democrats and the media think they're entitled to do whatever it takes to win this election. THE SCARIEST THING about this election is not the prospect of a contested outcome with no winner declared for weeks, just as in 2000. No, the most scary thing is the sense of entitlement that many Democrats and their allies have about tomorrow's election. It goes like this: Bush stole the presidency four years ago, then proceeded to act as if he had a mandate, so now we're entitled to do whatever it takes to defeat him, to say whatever we want. You...