The greatest challenge facing America's schools today isn't the budget crisis, or standardized testing, or "teacher quality." It's the enormous variation in the academic level of students coming into any given classroom. Unfortunately, the issue has become enmeshed in polarizing arguments about race, class, excellence, and equity. What's…

Defining and understanding a generation of Americans has always been difficult until years after the generation ends. Although there is universal agreement on the Baby Boomer generation (1946-1964) and most people agree that Generation X started in 1965 and ended around 1979, after that it gets murky. In his research, the author believes that the…