For immediate release (706 words with optional cut) Current proposals to increase college enrollments won’t magically increase Americans’ academic abilities. Indeed, there is already evidence that many students — even those who graduate — fall far below the traditional standard for college achievement. That which follows offers a glimpse of the polarization of ability evident today within a university. If college attendance is expanded further, admissions officials will undoubtedly ratchet down the ability roster, and…

For immediate release (546 words) Common sense and lots of statistical evidence suggest that stable two-parent households provide the best environment for child-rearing. Children continuously raised with both parents are less likely to be in poverty, to get in trouble with the law and are much more likely to excel educationally.  Divorce and illegitimacy rates have risen in the United States since 1960. This is well known. What is not as well known is that…

For release March 20 and thereafter (665 words) ISTEP passage rates at the Charles A. Tindley Accelerated School in Indianapolis are among the state’s highest, but the school’s leaders and supporters believe they can be higher still. That confidence lies behind the school’s announcement that it will open an all-boys middle school in 2012-13 with an all-girls middle school to follow. Chancellor and CEO Marcus Robinson has data to show that urban children excel when…

Editors:  Please sub for this updated version. (546 words) Declining social order; rampant promiscuity; conventional morals in shambles; illegitimacy and venereal disease all too common: A description of much of contemporary America according to social scientist Charles Murray’s in his recent book “Coming Apart.”  Murray’s makes a credible case that the problems of poverty and social dysfunction trace to illegitimacy and divorce. A later column will critically review Murray’s thinking and evidence.  Today’s point:  these…