Of late, I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of expertise. It’s partly because the topic is highly relevant to my forthcoming Letters to a Young Education Reformer, partly because of the well-deserved attention to Don Hirsch’s new book The Knowledge Deficit, partly because expert predictions about everything from the consequences of Brexit to our current...

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As everyone knows, the Department of Education released its latest package of proposed regulations today. Among other issues, this round addresses the heart of the Every Student Succeeds Act: its accountability provisions. The law, as you may recall, represented a major departure from No Child Left Behind, sending significant authority back to the states. It didn’t give them ca...

/* custom css */ .tdi_2_5fa{ min-height: 0; } /* custom css */ .tdi_4_a15{ vertical-align: baseline; } Lamar Alexander walks to the Senate floor on January 21, 2020. When the 116th Congress adjourns, sometime before January 2021, Tennessee’s 80-year-old senior senator, Lama...

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Sometimes called the Second American Revolution, the War of 1812 is significant both to the history of the United States and the nation’s narrative of forbearance. The bombardment of Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore, depicted in this engraving, inspired lawyer Francis Scott Key to write a poem that eventually became “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Narrative weav...

When Lois Griffin runs for school board in the animated television comedy Family Guy, she stumps on a platform of “competent teachers, a better-funded music department, and updated textbooks that don’t refer to the Civil Rights Movement as ‘trouble ahead.’” Perpetually outdated, inordinately expensive, and a pain to lug around, textbooks have been the bête noire of educators an...

Lamar Alexander stumps in New Hampshire in 1996 during his first bid for the Republican presidential nomination. The former senator eschewed ideology, instead finding success as a consensus builder, especially in education. Most books about governing start with a theory of how the world works and how to solve its problems. Marxism. Capitalism. Communitar...