Politics & Policy

The Office for Civil Rights Jumps to Conclusions on School Discipline

By Michael J. Petrilli April 26, 2016

The Office for Civil Rights fails to consider that the disciplining of minority students will be commensurate with their infractions of school rules.

Politics & Policy

The Left Seems to Define Poverty Up to Make America Look Worse Than It Is

By Michael J. Petrilli & Brandon L. Wright November 16, 2015

Anti-poverty scholars seem intent on cherry-picking the data, cut-offs points, and poverty rates to paint America in as Dickensian a light as possible.

Economy & Business

America’s Unexceptional Poverty Rate

By Michael J. Petrilli & Brandon L. Wright November 3, 2015

The United States’ child-poverty rate is unexceptional by international standards; those who say different are talking about income inequality, not poverty.

Economy & Business

Can a Poor Community Rebuild Social Capital?

By Michael J. Petrilli June 3, 2015

At the heart of Robert Putnam’s important new book, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, is a paradox. As Putnam so effectively and compassionately illustrates, the fundamental reality of ...

Politics & Policy

Take Back Our Schools

By Michael J. Petrilli March 12, 2015

Fifteen years ago, when today’s high-school seniors were in pre-school, presidential candidate George W. Bush proposed that America “leave no child behind.” His call for an aggressive federal role in ...

Politics & Policy

Scott Walker Doesn’t Need a Degree — and Neither Do You

By Michael J. Petrilli February 20, 2015

The pundit class is raising questions about whether Scott Walker’s lack of a college degree disqualifies him from being America’s 45th president. This is what educators call a “teachable moment,” ...

Politics & Policy

Dems Pull the Race Card on Education, Again

By Frederick M. Hess & Michael J. Petrilli January 14, 2015

It has taken liberal school reformers almost no time at all to throw the race card into the debate about reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. Eager ...

Arne Duncan’s Office of Civil Rights: Six Years Of Meddling

By Michael J. Petrilli October 10, 2014

At his confirmation hearing in 2009, Senator Lamar Alexander famously told Arne Duncan that “President-elect Obama has made several distinguished cabinet appointments, but in my view of it all, I ...

Politics & Policy

The Two Tracks of School Reform

By Michael J. Petrilli & Chester E. Finn Jr. April 1, 2014

For two decades now, education reformers have promoted a two-track strategy for improving our schools. The first track is standards-based: Set clear, high expectations in core academic subjects; test students ...

Politics & Policy

President Obama’s Inequality Speech, Revised

By Michael J. Petrilli December 12, 2013

F. Scott Fitzgerald said that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ...