RUTHFULLY YOURS

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Pushed back on APUSH.
NAS sparked a national controversy in summer 2014 when we challenged the College Board’s new AP U.S. History (APUSH) standards as politically biased and intellectually hollow. This year, we worked with a panel of historians who published on the NAS website an open letter that convinced the College Board to remove from the APUSH standards many of the faults we had pointed out. The fight, however, continues.

Sparked debate on sustainability and fossil fuel divestment.
We published two major studies this year. In March we released our book-length study, Sustainability: Higher Education’s New Fundamentalism. Launched at an event at the Millennium Hotel, across the street from the UN with Arthur Brooks as the keynote speaker, Sustainability quickly grabbed attention from the Wall Street Journal and from columnist George Will, to become the first widely publicized critique of the way colleges inject the idea of “sustainability” into their curricula and student life. Our sequel, Inside Divestment: The Illiberal Movement to Turn a Generation Against Fossil Fuels, released in November, portrays the growing national campaign to get colleges and universities to sell off investments in coal, oil, and gas companies.
Dug deep into the Common Core.
NAS president Peter Wood edited and wrote the introduction for a new book, Drilling through the Core: Why Common Core Is Bad for America. The book provides essays from nationally-recognized scholars who critique the Common Core K-12 State Standards.
Resisted racial preferences.
The case of Fisher v. University of Texas, which challenges the use of racial preferences in college admissions, came before the Supreme Court for the second time. NAS signed an amicus brief on behalf of Fisher, and NAS board member Gail Heriot, a professor of law at the University of San Diego, authored a major study that finds racial preferences often hurt the students they were intended to help. NAS mailed copies of Professor Heriot’s study to all our members.
Defended due process.

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NAS president Peter Wood edited and wrote the introduction for a new book, Drilling through the Core: Why Common Core Is Bad for America. The book provides essays from nationally-recognized scholars who critique the Common Core K-12 State Standards.

Drilling through the Core analyzes Common Core from the standpoint of its deleterious effects on curriculum-language arts, mathematics, history, and more-as well as its questionable legality, its roots in the aggressive spending of a few wealthy donors, its often-underestimated costs, and the untold damage it will wreak on American higher education.

At a time when more and more people are questioning the wisdom of federally-mandated one-size-fits-all solutions, Drilling through the Core offers well-considered arguments for stopping Common Core in its tracks.

Now in one volume, get the research on Common Core’s quality, legality and cost that laid the groundwork for the ongoing national debate about how best to achieve higher academic standards.

With polls showing declining public support for Common Core, with its presence on the presidential campaign trail, and with more states backing out of PARCC and SBAC, Pioneer Institute is pleased to announce publication of a timely new book, Drilling through the Core: Why Common Core is Bad for American Education, edited and with an introduction by Peter W. Wood, and contributions by some of the country’s top education scholars, including Sandra Stotsky, R. James Milgram, Williamson Evers, Ze’ev Wurman, and more…

Amid the media’s elation over the United Nations climate deal reached in Paris on Dec. 12, one significant outcome has been overlooked. The European Union failed to achieve its main objective, namely that the agreement adopt carbon-dioxide mitigation commitments that are “legally binding on all parties.”

While this may appear to be a major setback, it liberates Europe from the restrictions of the Kyoto Protocol—which runs out in 2020—and opens the way for more flexible and less damaging policies.

During the Paris negotiations, European Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete warned that the EU “cannot make the mistake we made in Kyoto” where “all the big emitters were outside the legally binding agreement.” For Europe, the Kyoto Protocol has forced EU states to adopt unilateral, and disastrously costly, decarbonization policies. With their manufacturers rapidly losing ground to international competition, governments are increasingly concerned about the threat high energy prices pose to Europe’s industrial base.

The economic damage of unilateral climate policy is now widely acknowledged. In September 2014, then-EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger warned that “If there is no binding commitment from countries such as India, Russia, Brazil, the U.S., China, Japan and South Korea, whose governments are responsible for some 70% of global emissions,” it would be a mistake for EU states to bind only themselves. “If we are too ambitious and others do not follow us, we will have an export of production and more emissions outside the EU.”