This is our annual “education issue,” and we’re confident that you’ll want to consume the special section’s four excellent articles contained therein that are must-reads for anyone who cares about the state — and massive consequences — of education in America. The quartet includes Sarah Schutte’s reporting on how technology is impacting homeschooling (great things are happening, but none of it can or should replace parental involvement); Chester Finn’s solution to the falling K–12 test scores; Rafi Eis’s alarm-sounding about progressive-ed theories overtaking New York City’s schools; and Frederick Hess’s attack on the powerful “B.A. cartel” for its distortion of the labor market. And there’s plenty more exceptional content between the covers, including Kevin Williamson’s brilliant cover essay on Kanye West (“he is kind of a mess”), Chris O’Dea’s account of his deep-dive talks with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about China’s expanding/threatening influence in global shipping and port-facility construction, and Jack Butler and Alec Dent’s case that smoking cigarettes is not a “conservative” habit.
Click on the links and enjoy what you can . . . until you hit the paywall. And you will, a lot sooner than you wish. Maybe you’ve already done that? So sorry about that, but — there is an obvious solution. It’s NRPLUS. Why not subscribe right now to begin enjoying all the brilliant conservative writing that one can feast on, all day long, at NRO?