Year: 2014

Have you had enough of the testing tyranny? Join the club. To be clear: I’m not against all standardized academic tests. My kids excel on tests. The problem is that there are too damned many of these top-down assessments, measuring who knows what, using our children as guinea pigs and cash cows. College-bound students in […]

Spring cleaning is a healthy tradition. If only politicians did it! They don’t. When Barack Obama ran for president, he promised to clean house, “I’m not a Democrat who believes that we can or should defend every government program just because it’s there. There are some that don’t work.” I cheered when I heard that! […]

Many economists, politicians and pundits assert that median wages have stagnated since the 1970s. That’s a call for government to do something about it. But before we look at the error in their assertion, let’s work through an example that might shed a bit of light on the issue. Suppose that you paid me a […]

Amid all the controversy that surrounds the Obama presidency, none has really changed his personal image among the American people. His credibility has suffered as his claims about Obamacare have been proven false. Certainly, his competency is more subject to question. But, while voters disagree with much of what he proposes and has done, none […]

With so much uncertainty in the world, it’s upsetting to see American politicians, backed by cheesy special interests, trying to start a war with Europe. A cheese war. And in the jingoistic climate of today’s aggressive and expansionist cheese policy, I’m a cheese lover without a country. And some will call me a traitor. When […]

PARIS — There are fewer things more pathetic than watching someone take a running dive off a high board only to end in a spectacular belly flop and still think that they’re scoring a perfect 10. That’s U.S. President Barack Obama right now on the issue of sanctions against Russia. It’s a worrying attitude that […]

On March 17, 19 parents who send their children to Success Academy, a Harlem charter school, filed suit in federal court to stop New York Mayor Bill de Blasio from denying them previously arranged space in a public school building. Without space, their children and 173 others will not be able to continue at Success […]

When I was a kid — which wasn’t that long ago, given that I just turned 30 in January — I recall hearing a popular phrase on the playground: “Mind your own business.” MYOB reared its head whenever somebody threatened to rat out a fellow student for anything from harmless roughhousing to juvenile delinquency. The […]

Will everyone please stop talking about a new Cold War? However badly things work out between Russia and the United States and the West, a new Cold War isn’t in the cards because Russia today isn’t the Soviet Union. Sure, there are similarities. We are in a diplomatic and geostrategic conflict with Russia, which was […]

Professor Amy Chua of the Yale law school is better known as a “Tiger Mom” because of her take-no-prisoners, tough love approach to raising children. She and her husband Jed Rubenfeld (a fellow Yale law professor) have written what may turn out to be the best book of this year. It is titled “The Triple […]