Free Republic

Looks like somebody may have finally come up with a better system than Common Core. John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, New York was having a lot of trouble with their numbers. Not enough students were graduating, and that’s bad for business. But rather than messing around with the tedious business of trying to motivate the students and their parents or examine how effective the teachers actually are, they clearly had one of those, wow, I could have had a V-8 moments. In 2009 they were only graduating 56% of their students. But by 2013 – just five short years...

Can America's schools teach history? The question ought to be ridiculous -- of course they can. What do we pay them for? History is as essential as reading and writing to a republic of free citizens. America's schools have always taught America's history. Unfortunately, there's a lot of evidence that our schools are doing a poor job of it. Results of the 2001 National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that 57 percent of high school seniors scored below the "basic" level of history achievement. And "basic" isn't impressive. The test-makers believe that students should achieve the "proficient" level, but only...