Wow! When you really look, our elite educators have been busy-busy-busy. At first glance, you think these people are clumsy, or misguided, or they have very bad judgment. Then you start to see patterns — for example, everything they’re really excited about is usually a bad idea. So bad it takes a kind of genius [...]

****announcing an important new article**** Here’s a summary of my school years: all my schools were highly-rated, but not one class was taught as well as it could have been. Why?! I’ve been totally intrigued by this question for a long time. Here’s my suggestion: we need to look at classrooms the way an engineer [...]

Goods News! Princeton Alumni Weekly ran my letter–the one below. My faith in Princeton is partially restored. I think it’s a smart letter, and written in a fairly low key. So why not run it? Well, I’ve noticed more and more how the liberal media help the educators by the simple device of standing silently [...]

A column I have in several places on the internet starts like this: “Most major American newspapers are scoring a painful trifecta: losing readers, waving goodbye to advertisers, and firing journalists. Why is this happening?” I discuss two causes. The first (in brief) is the papers are too busy pushing their political agenda. The article [...]

Finally, all of “A Tribute to Rudolph Flesch” is on Improve-Education.org. Part I is mainly about PHONICS versus LOOK-SAY. I worked hard to make the fundamental issues as clear as possible. (Alternate title: Why Frank Smith Is Wrong) Parts II and III broaden out to be, for their fairly short length, a very good history [...]