Education

The high school movement, an early 20th century American grassroots shift in secondary education, produced “a spectacular educational transformation,” according to Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz. Between 1910 and 1940, 18-year-old enrollment grew from 19% to 71%, and graduation rates rose from 9% to more than 50%, boosting the country to the forefront […]

American society suffers from de-composition and de-consolidation. We are increasingly atomized. People have an attenuated sense of belonging. They are less integrated into family and community. This isolation makes us less resilient and more vulnerable. And it also makes us less stable and more susceptible to ideological infections. American Compass is developing a menu of […]

In a recent post, Chris Arnade compared the American education system to strip mining, an analogy that Patrick Deneen uses in his book Why Liberalism Failed. A similar analogy comes to mind to describe charter schools—a public policy tool that until recently earned bipartisan favor. If our education system is an intellectual strip mine, charter […]

During his growing up years, Mark, an underemployed contract laborer in his 30s, often heard his mother describe their town as “the devil’s thumbprint.” The name alluded to both its literal location in a valley and its social stigma as the watering hole of riffraff. “You gotta go up the hill and get out,” Mark […]

Editor’s note: For a longer discussion of this topic, read Bruno Manno’s essay, “A Social-Capital Approach to Education Reform,” in the new issue of National Affairs. A social capital approach to school reform focused on developing habits of mind and habits of association in young people is a basis for conservatives to lead on K-12 […]

“I will not live in the pod.” This commonplace rallying cry among younger Right-aligned people on social media is approaching the status of a credal opening statement. For the uninitiated, it simply marks a public refusal to accept the lifestyle of the young urban singleton residing in the microapartment, feeding the pet, streaming the Netflix, […]

Welcome to American Compass. Our mission is to restore an economic consensus that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation’s liberty and prosperity. Many of the most insightful and creative policymakers, researchers, and pundits on the American right-of-center, and some on the left-of-center as well, are dedicating tremendous intellectual energy toward […]