Common Core

July 29, 2025

Lessons from Military-Run Schools: America’s Secret Weapon in Education

Military-run schools lead every U.S. state in NAEP scores and even outperform educational juggernauts abroad—despite half of their students living at the poverty line. “Lessons from Military-Run Schools: America’s Secret Weapon in Education” argues that, rather than embracing new fads and experimental programs, American public schools ought to be studying the DoDEA playbook. 
June 20, 2025

A Decade of Doubt

By failing to believe in students’ capabilities, and to set standards accordingly, we have condemned many to illiteracy and generally dire educational outcomes—in sum, incapability.  This need not be the case, and for a brief moment, in Massachusetts and other educational hotspots, it wasn’t.

Examining the Academic Achievement Decline in New England Prior to COVID-19

COVID-19 was not the beginning of student performance declines in the United States. Academic achievement for students across the country began to drop-off following the widespread implementation of the Common Core curriculum in 2013. While declines have occurred across the country, New England has experienced a particularly sharp decrease in student achievement.
May 11, 2020

California's Common Core Apologia

In a recent blog, Dr. Michael Kirst, past president of the California State Board of Education, attempts to defend his record of Common Core implementation during that period. But policy experts Ze’ev Wurman & Williamson Evers set the Golden State's record during Common Core straight.
April 27, 2020

Study Finds Historic Drop in National Reading and Math Scores Since Adoption of Common Core Curriculum Standards

New study shows that, breaking with decades of slow improvement, U.S. reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and other assessments have seen historic declines since most states implemented national Common Core English and math curriculum standards six years ago.
September 27, 2019

Dimming the state’s literary light

September marks Johnson’s 310th birthday. His A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) used 114,000 timeless quotations to help define 42,000 words, making it among the most famous dictionaries in human history.

How Massachusetts Showed the Way on Education Reform

By Jamie Gass & Charles Chieppo Read this op-ed in The American Conservative We are now nearly four decades beyond the publication of A Nation at Risk, a federal report that indicted the “rising tide of mediocrity” and initiated a well-deserved period...
January 9, 2019

Study: After-School Programs Can Help Improve Flat or Declining Math Achievement

Philanthropic, other organizations should consider providing financial assistance to allow programs to expand into lower-income communities BOSTON – At a time of declining state and national math proficiency, after-school math programs offer a viable option for quickly increasing the number of mathematically competent...
September 26, 2018

Study Finds Declining Student Achievement and Increased Harm to School Choice Since Common Core

Read coverage of this report in The Daily Caller, Breitbart News, and The Federalist. Curriculum centralization has failed to improve international competitiveness—it’s time to re-think curriculum standards-based reform BOSTON – While U.S. academic performance has declined since the broad implementation of Common...
July 23, 2018

Reading great literature like ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ helps students become great readers

This op-ed appeared in The Daily Caller, The Berkshire Eagle, CommonWealth magazine, and The Lowell Sun. “Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget,” reads “The Count of Monte Cristo” by French novelist Alexandre Dumas, “that all...