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Thomas K. Lindsay, Ph.D.

Tom K. Lindsay, Ph.D., is a distinguished senior fellow for Next Generation Texas at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He has more than two decades’ experience in education management and instruction, including service as a dean, provost, and college president.

K-12 Education

Study: K-12 Grade Inflation Making American Kids Dumber, Costing Them Millions

When teachers inflate grades — giving higher marks than students’ actual performance warrants — the effects ripple far beyond the classroom. Increasingly widespread high school grade inflation can cost students more than $200,000 in lost earning potential per teacher per year, finds a groundbreaking new study. Authored by Jeffrey T. Denning, Rachel Nesbit, Nolan Pope,...

March 23, 2026

K-12 Education

Alpha School isn’t an ‘AI story.’ It’s a structural indictment—and employers/HR should pay attention

Alpha School’s “AI education shakeup” is really a warning to employers: the fastest way to outperform isn’t smarter tech—it’s removing the soul-crushing compliance load that keeps humans from owning the mission. Alpha School was founded in 2014, and it’s recently become a national talking point because its students do core academics in roughly two hours...

March 18, 2026

Higher Education

A Triumph for Civic Renewal at America’s 250th

A Texas program aims to improve civic literacy in underserved communities. At a time when we Americans routinely worry about the health of our civic culture, the U.S. Department of Education has made a notable investment. Earlier this month, the department approved a $1.9-million grant for The American Civic Tradition at 250, a joint initiative of Texas...

January 28, 2026

Higher Education

Brandeis Is Doing Something About Grade Inflation. Will Texas Be Next?

This is a good-news, bad-news tale for American higher education. The good news: A top-tier university has finally taken serious aim at the epidemic of grade hyperinflation. The bad news: We have fallen so far that even elite institutions must now devise entirely new, parallel evaluation systems just to deliver what straightforward, principled grading should...

January 22, 2026

Higher Education

Texas’ Top 10% Rule: A Well-Intentioned Distortion of Merit

The Declaration of Independence proclaims that “all men are created equal” and endowed with “unalienable Rights” to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” This foundational American creed demands a meritocracy—a system in which talent, effort, and achievement determine outcomes, not birth, wealth, or group identity. Yet Texas’s Top 10% rule, enacted in 1997, subverts...

November 4, 2025

Technology

Death by a Thousand Texts: How Social Media Shackles Our Children’s Minds

George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking...

October 30, 2025

Higher Education

Irony Alert: Students Demand Profs Stop Handing Out Easy A’s

I never thought I’d see the day. Grading standards in college have grown so lax (nearly 50% of all college grades nationwide are A’s) that now even the students—the students!—are demanding that professors grow a spine and grade them honestly. In August, a letter was sent to President Donald Trump by the student body presidents...

October 30, 2025

Higher Education

Ditching the ABA Monopoly: A Call for Competition among Texas Law Schools

A recent letter from eight deans of Texas’ American Bar Association (ABA)-accredited law schools is urging the Texas Supreme Court to maintain the requirement that attorneys graduate from ABA-accredited institutions. However, viewed through the lens of our Founding principles—natural rights, individual liberty, and limited government—the deans’ defense of the American Bar Association’s monopoly on accreditation...

September 16, 2025

Higher Education

Killing Lincoln Again: Human Rights, God, and the Curse of Kaine

In a recent statement, Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016, asserted that individual rights do not originate from God but are granted by the government. Adding insult to injury, he went on to dismiss those who believe otherwise as akin to “Iranian religious fanatics.” Here’s his full statement: The notion that...

September 10, 2025

Higher Education

A Real College Student’s Take on Murray’s ‘Real Education’

I was two years into college when I picked up the book “Real Education” by the much-maligned conservative Charles Murray. Even after the roughly 17 years since its publication, I found that the book surprisingly offered an educational perspective more conducive to student success than the more recent “College for All” movement I was surrounded...

July 15, 2025

Higher Education

Would Thomas Jefferson Defund Harvard University?

Thomas Jefferson—author of the Declaration of Independence, our third president, and the founder of the University of Virginia—believed deeply in the power of education to serve a free society. For him, a university was not merely a place to learn facts—it was a training ground for citizens and leaders, guided by reason, liberty, and the pursuit...

June 13, 2025

Economy

Abe Lincoln vs. Dred Scott: A Playbook for Donald Trump’s Court Fights

In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court rendered an infamous decision, Dred Scott v. Sandford. By declaring that Black Americans could never be citizens and stripping Congress of the power to restrict slavery in the territories, Chief Justice Taney both misinterpreted the Constitution and kindled a conflagration. Abraham Lincoln, still years away from the presidency, saw...

May 29, 2025