What could be more tedious and uninspiring than efforts such as “Students are taught to generate their own questions” and “Students are taught to become aware of what they do not understand”? These metacognitive strategies turn the reading experience into a stilted, halting activity, making the content students must learn a boring rehearsal. People love the humanities because of the content of them, not because of the interpretation of them.

Any gains provided by a massive new investment in preschool will quickly fade away if Mayor de Blasio doesn’t also tackle New York City’s mediocre elementary schools.

Much of what we read in Adam Bryant's “Corner Office” columns would certainly justify Paul Tough’s applause for persistence and grit. But though certainly gritty and persistent, all of the subjects of the column show signs of having a remarkable background in knowledge acquisition (e.g. professional parents, high SATs, college degrees) probably earned their success by putting their grit at the service of learning.

The New York Times editorial board yesterday weighed in on why American students hate math and how instruction needs to be changed.

We can only hope that policymakers, teachers, and administrators understand the limitations of the grit hypothesis so we don’t disadvantage yet another generation of hard-working, gritty, and determined poor kids by not teaching them what they need to know to succeed.

A front-page article in the New York Times looks at efforts to enroll more minority students in Advanced Placement classes. Andy Mollison wrote for Ed Next about the explosive growth of the AP program and at whether the high academic standards of the program are being maintained.

This testimony was presented in Ohio by Ze'ev Wurman of the Hoover Institution on November 20, 2013.

I"ve long said that the Common Core strikes me as an intriguing effort that could do much good. The past couple weeks, I"ve been struck by how fragile the effort is starting to seem and how clumsily the Common Core"ites seem to be responding to challenges. In the spirit of public service, here"s some advice.

There is no Common Core curriculum, radical or otherwise.

Does the progressive vision of schooling work to help poor children gain the skills and knowledge and confidence and connections that will allow them to climb the ladder into the middle class?