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.
Ken Burns became famous for his magisterial PBS film series, “The Civil War.” My family loved this series, which featured, naturally enough, Lincoln’s arguments and tactics during the war. But Burns’s latest pronouncement makes one wonder whether he really learned anything about Lincoln at all. In a recent podcast discussing the impending closure of his...
As we observe the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the question has been raised whether our experiment in self-government still merits our celebration—or our condemnation. I find myself having to republish a rebuttal to this claim every July 4, because every July 4 brings a new call to no longer celebrate the Fourth....
In a single revealing moment on MSNBC, Katy Tur exposed the central fault line in American politics — not a gaffe about U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, but a profound confusion about the foundation of the American regime itself. Reacting to Johnson’s statement that our rights come from God, not government, Tur asked whether this...
So, it turns out that the little boy was right all along about the emperor’s new clothes. In an effort to restore grading standards, Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences is conducting an email ballot on the administration’s proposal to limit solid A grades at 20% of students per course (plus up to four additional A’s, if merited)....
Recently at UT-Austin, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spoke as part of the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence. Thomas understands what too many in our day have forgotten: that the Declaration is, as Abraham Lincoln put it, the “apple of gold,” and the Constitution is the picture of silver framed around it. The...
Yale’s Committee on “Trust in Higher Education” just released what higher-education reformers have to view as a remarkable document. It addresses the ongoing erosion of public trust in America’s universities. In doing so, it owns up to the self-censorship, extreme faculty political homogeneity, grade hyperinflation, administrative bloat, and the opaqueness of “holistic” admissions. For an...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...