Robert Bellafiore Jr.

Aug 1, 2024 | city-journal.org | Robert Bellafiore Jr.

Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing), by Salman Khan (Viking, 272 pp., $30.00)Salman Khan has been one of the most prominent voices in education for some 15 years now, and deservedly so. Khan Academy, the platform he founded in 2008, has made education accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, producing free videos on math, science, history, and more, from the pre-K to the Advanced Placement level.

Jul 24, 2024 | city-journal.org | Robert Bellafiore Jr. |Jon Askonas

A sea change is underway in the tech industry. It is increasingly not just permitted, but downright fashionable, for technologists to reside on the political right. Moments after the Trump assassination attempt, Elon Musk “fully endorse[d]” the former president.

Jun 3, 2024 | city-journal.org | Robert Bellafiore Jr.

Growth: A History and a Reckoning, by Daniel Susskind (Belknap Press, 304 pp., $29.95)“Once you start thinking about growth,” the late economist Robert Lucas said, “it’s hard to think about anything else.” For economists, maybe. For the rest of us, economic growth has generally been an afterthought, even as it provides much that we take for granted, from higher living standards to more leisure time.

Dec 12, 2023 | city-journal.org | Robert Bellafiore Jr.

This school year, New York City public schools are conducting an experiment: Can they once again teach children to read? Following New York students’ dismal scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the “Nation’s Report Card,” Mayor Eric Adams has mandated a new curriculum for literacy that emphasizes phonics and moves away from the “balanced literacy” approach of the last two decades.

Aug 31, 2023 | city-journal.org | Zach Graves |Robert Bellafiore Jr.

American education faces a curious mix of change and stasis. Public school closures during the pandemic fundamentally changed the relationship between schools and families, visible in historic declines in students’ test scores. K-12 education is also struggling with a broader stagnation: inflation-adjusted average per-pupil expenditures have more than doubled since 1970, yet long-term test scores have remained broadly flat.