The New Yorker ran a big piece about Tom Steyer, billionaire environmental activist. He’s built a whole crusade around the Keystone Pipeline, explaining himself this way, “In every generation, there is an overwhelming issue that people may not recognize at the time…If you blew it on the big issue, then that’s the measure.”

My first thought was, maybe the Keystone Pipeline is NOT the big issue. Maybe the fact that we have an intellectually corrupt public…

I've often had a fantasy where, circa 1955, the Chairmen of the Departments of English at Princeton, Harvard and Yale stand on the steps of the Library of Congress and proclaim, "We support Rudolf Flesch!" This small gesture could have saved tens of millions of children from misery. But nobody from these places did a thing. Much to their shame.....

Several years back, as I studied Flesch and the swirl we call the Reading…

A sight-word is anything you memorize ENTIRELY AS A VISUAL OBJECT. (Google either currency symbols or electrical symbols, find something you never saw before, and stare at it. You won’t be able to pronounce it in any way.)

Meanwhile, a vocabulary word is something you memorize in many ways: spelling, pronunciation, number of syllables, appearance, similar or rhyming words, the history of the word, personal associations,…

Article on American Thinker  explains why "close reading" is a misguided pedagogy.

If you are suspicious that Common Core contains lots of nasty little surprises, you will find confirmation.

The weird central premise of Close Reading is that children should read the same thing over and over again. Teachers are supposed to pick a small passage; then the kids…

Here is my annual update:

http://www.free-press-release.com/news-k-12-education-reform-starts-here-1380753376.html

 For those not familiar with the site, my emphasis is on identifying and explaining the worst theories and methods used in the public schools. Generally speaking, I don't know if there are any good ideas in the public schools. It is as if some of…