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Make Good (School) Choices

Johns Hopkins’s Ashley Berner and the Manhattan Institute’s Andy Smarick discuss options and tradeoffs in restructuring American public education.

Reform Requires Reformers

Ashley Berner makes the case for a pluralist structure that embraces district, charter, and private schools, while insisting on quality.

An Emergent Educational Order

The Manhattan Institute’s Andy Smarick discusses how an intelligent system emerged in American education over many years.

Between the Common School and the Market

Johns Hopkins’s Ashley Berner discusses the benefits and tradeoffs of a pluralistic approach to education in America.

What Are Public Schools For?

According to a new American Compass survey, parents have a different answer than activists and policymakers do, writes Oren Cass.

Survey Finds U.S. Public Education Ignores Priorities of Parents and Students

PRESS RELEASE—Education reformers have lost sight of what most Americans say public education is for, according to a new American Compass survey.

Failing on Purpose Survey

The American Compass Failing on Purpose Survey explores the perspectives and experiences of those in closest contact with the American education system—namely parents, current students, and recent graduates.

The Citizenship Test

Public education must instill civic virtues and shared allegiances.

Laboratories for Democracy

Public education must advance national power.

Making Meritocrats Moral

Public education must form a virtuous elite.

Failing on Purpose

How We Forgot What Public Education Is For

Conservative Scholars Rethink Public Education’s Purpose

PRESS RELEASE—Essay series explores how public education is failing in both practice and principle

Foreword: Teach for America

Public education’s primary purpose is preservation of our democratic republic.

The School of Self-Rule

Public education must empower the common citizen.

The “Big Quit” Is an Opportunity to Fix Our Broken Education System

A broad rethinking of work and human capital development is occurring while 10.4 million jobs sit unfilled and more than 8.4 million unemployed individuals look for work.

The Snowflakes Aren’t Melting

Most so-called snowflakes accumulate not in society’s quiet valleys where we might expect to find gentler souls genuinely struggling to cope with conflict, but rather atop the peaks of elite institutions to which our most aggressive strivers have clawed their way.

When Student Loans Pay for Nothing but Palm Trees

What we gave our children (and paid dearly for) was a mountain of debt and no job opportunities to be had. So much for the American Dream.

How to Fix Widespread Buyer’s Remorse in Education

Almost two-thirds of U.S. high school graduates enroll immediately in some form of postsecondary education with a clear-cut motive. In 2019, 83.5% of entering freshmen said that getting a better job was a “very important” reason for attending college, up from a 1976 low of 68%. Are these expectations realized? Mostly no.

Where Do Parents Go When Public Schools Go ‘Woke’?

Parents who live their lives according to religious principles should be able to find a school in which they are welcomed, not attacked or undermined.

High School and Beyond: Creating Pathways to Opportunity

The essential elements of a new opportunity program are what students know (knowledge) and whom they know (relationships).

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