Classroom Ideology

More than two decades ago, I co-authored a Pacific Research Institute report entitled “Facing the Classroom Challenge,” which analyzed the teacher-training curricula at schools of education in the California State University system.  Many of these schools openly stated their left-wing bias. At California State University Dominguez Hills in the Los ...

When average people think about classical education, they tend to think about students reading the great works of Western civilization such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Those same people probably do not think about mathematics and its classical origins, yet it is the movement away from mathematics’ classical heritage that ...

When entrepreneur Elon Musk made headlines with his vociferous comments supporting the H-1B visa program, the ensuing debate focused on the implications of his position on immigration. But this debate obscured the reason America even has such a program in the first place: its homegrown students are being poorly educated ...

U.S. high schools will graduate a record 3.9 million students in 2025 before entering a long decline that threatens the future of higher education, a report shows. In findings published Wednesday, the nonprofit Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education projected the headcount of public and private high school graduates will ...

Think about your favorite novel that you read in school. Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables? Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice? Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote? Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations? Now imagine if all the wonder and wisdom of those great works was closed off to you because your school failed to ...

As the United States waged an ideological war against the Soviet Union in the latter half of the 20th century, the American dream became a symbol of prosperity, one which captured the imagination of millions around the world who sought a better life. My father, who grew up in a ...

Conservative analysts say there is already evidence of defiance. They pointed to numbers in the database showing that shares of Asian students fell by 6 percentage points at Yale and Duke this fall, even though the Supreme Court case involved claims of discrimination against Asian American applicants. “Such drops in ...

Dr. Lance Izumi, senior director of the Pacific Research Institute’s Center for Education, recently wrote “The Great Classroom Collapse.” The book centers around a fundamental question: Why can’t kids today read or do math? In an attempt to answer that question, “The Great Classroom Collapse” is divided into three sections: ...

Recently, as I was sitting in the dentist’s chair, I mentioned to my dental hygienist that I had just written a new book entitled The Great Classroom Collapse, which tells the stories of students, parents, and teachers who are experiencing the implosion of math and reading learning in America’s schools.  ...