Books, Arts & Manners: Achievement Test

We Must Take Charge: Our Schools and Our Future, by Chester E. Finn Jr. (Free Press, 365 pp., $22.95)

ANEW and disquieting tribalism has vastly complicated America’s education crisis. Everyone who needs to know knows that our high-school seniors fall far behind those of France, Germany, and Japan on academic subjects that matter. But many don’t know, or profess not to, that the fundamental problem of our schools today lies in two interrelated realities—a strident tribalism masquerading as pluralism and the unwillingness of the educational establishment to accept accountability.

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Ernest Lefever

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We Must Take Charge: Our Schools and Our Future, by Chester E. Finn Jr. (Free Press, 365 pp., $22.95)

ANEW and disquieting tribalism has vastly complicated America’s education crisis. Everyone who needs to know knows that our high-school seniors fall far behind those of France, Germany, and Japan on academic subjects that matter. But many don’t know, or profess not to, that the fundamental problem of our schools today lies in two interrelated realities—a strident tribalism masquerading as pluralism and the unwillingness of the educational establishment to accept accountability.