An edition of the Library
Collected Essays: 2025–2026
Twenty essays from the Center’s first two years — the case for excellence, the policy fights, and the classrooms proving it — gathered into a single readable edition.
VERIFY: the edition’s compile date (dated here to its addition to the Library); the byline on Hobson v. Hansen (the edition credits Jack Despain Zhou, the hub feature credits the Center collectively); and the part notes, which are the hub’s own annotations, not the edition’s.
Since February 2025, the Center has published its long-form writing one essay at a time — in the newsletter first, then collected here in the Library. This edition, compiled and edited by Sebastian Garren, binds the first two years into one continuous, printable volume: five parts that move from the argument for excellence, through the policy machinery, to the classrooms where the ideas are already working.
The contents below follow the edition’s own order. Essays with a hub feature link to it directly; the rest open in the edition itself, which carries every essay in full, notes included.
- Essays
- 20
- Parts
- 5
- Words
- ~74,000
- Contributors
- 17
Part IExcellence
The case itself — why one-size-fits-all failed for three generations, and what a pro-excellence system would aim at instead.
- Schools Should Pursue Excellence 10′ The Education Progress Manifesto.
- No One Wants to Talk About Excellence in Public Schools 12′ How new fads in education reform reproduce old inequalities, and harm our politics.
- Sputnik 2.0 10′ The urgent lessons of China’s “genius-class” pipeline in the age of AI.
- Leveling Down 8′ How progressive education reforms chose equity over excellence, and got neither.
- Restoring Excellence in Vocational Education 7′ The real reason you can’t get a plumber.
Part IIPolicy
What governments and school systems could actually do — a federal agenda, ability grouping, grading, scholarships, and labor.
- What Should the Department of Education Do? 9′ Our plan for a federal pro-excellence education agenda.
- Grouping Students by Ability Transformed Our School. Could It Do the Same for Yours? 7′ A story of educational progress from an elementary school in Rockford, Illinois.
- The British Columbian Grading Breakdown 16′ How the province’s new Reporting Order collapses and confuses student assessment.
- The $1,700 Question 19′ A guide to the new federal tax credit scholarship program.
- The Broken Equation: When Labor Interests and Student Learning Come Apart 12′ The San Francisco teachers strike, Wisconsin’s Act 10, and arguing better about teachers unions.
Part IIIGifted
The students the system most reliably fails — and the history of how that neglect became policy.
- Exceptionally Gifted Children 26′ Learning from the brightest youngsters: Miraca Gross’s 20-year study of children with IQs above 160.
- Hobson v. Hansen and the Decline of D.C. Schools 71′ A story of institutions.
- Politics and Neutrality in Public Schools 6′ Sectarianism in public school classrooms is eroding trust and stifling student growth.
- Specialized: A Stuyvesant Teacher Speaks Out 18′ The past, present, and future of Stuyvesant High School.
Part IVMath
The subject where the leveling-down fight is sharpest — algebra gatekeeping, state guidance gone wrong, and classroom practice that works.
- The Algebra Gatekeepers 26′ How schools deny advanced math to their highest-scoring students.
- What Went Wrong with Math Instruction in New York? 8′ How the New York State Education Department’s “Math Briefs” run afoul of good education science — and how to fix them.
- Dropping the Ball 24′ The expert behind New York’s bad plan to improve math instruction doubled down. We do, too.
- When Learning Clicks: How Four Minutes a Day Changed Math in My Classroom 6′ What happens when classroom practice aligns with how the brain actually learns?
- Research Finds Persistent Inequalities in Algebra Placement 5′ But universal student screening and automatic course enrollment can help.
Part VPostlude
What happens when a parent stops waiting for the system.