Tomorrow

Quote of the week, courtesy of Charles Strouse: "The sun'll come out, tomorrow, so ya gotta hang on 'til tomorrow, come what may."

What a week. Let's begin with recently-deceased Charles Strouse, legendary composer of Bye Bye Birdie and Annie. For an uplifting start to your week, give a listen to Annie’s signature song Tomorrow. More later on this song.

Historically, the Presidential Stupid-O-Meter tops out at ten. This week, Trump took it to 153. The “Big, Beautiful Bill” — piling trillions on the national debt, laying waste to science, education, social safety nets, and FEMA. A gutted National Security Council. A fake genocide video in the White House. More tariff tirades to promote his – not America’s – business interests. War on America’s universities. A chilling, hypocrisy-filled speech to West Point grads. And in his “free time,” selling access for $148 million of $TRUMP meme coin purchases. More damage to America’s future in one week than caused by any past President in four years.  Take that, Andrew Johnson!

Amid this destructive blizzard, Team Trump found time to attack Fairfax County’s Thomas Jefferson High School (TJ), a widely-praised AP test-prep factory. Worth noting, there’s zero evidence that AP courses produce real learning. One institution, Dartmouth, did assess what’s learned and retained by high-scoring AP students, finding . . . nothing was learned. But journalists and USNWR rankings love AP courses, so we celebrate these fact-based sprints through sprawling content — like the AP U.S. History course that allots a couple of class periods to The U.S. Constitution, the Civil War, and World War II. No surprise that AI scores perfect 5’s on all AP exams.

Historically, TJ admitted students based solely on scores on AP-like exams, and its student body was almost entirely white and Asian. In 2020, TJ broadened its admissions landscape to give some weight to evidence of an applicant’s ability to overcome challenge — shifting its student mix a bit and prompting a lawsuit from test-prep-from-birth families. Now, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has launched an investigation into TJ’s admissions criteria that, she explains, are “contrary to the law and to the fundamental principle that students should be evaluated on their merit, not the color of their skin.”   [Note, TJ’s application process blocks reviewers from seeing an applicant’s name or race.] Merit, it seems, is 100% about test scores and 0% about grit, determination, and resilience. Priorities from a President who has gone to the ends of the earth to block the release of his own grades and test scores.

We can learn a lot about admissions criteria from Johannesburg’s African Leadership Academy (ALA), an immersive grades 11-12 program that draws students from across Africa. Many new students arrive with little prior formal education. But they dive into ALA’s program of intense academics (six experiential courses per semester, plus independent research), leadership (speakers, seminars, direct experience), and entrepreneurship (every student starts a business or social venture).

ALA offers two profound, relevant insights.  

First, ALA’s graduates feed the world’s top universities, including every Ivy League school, Stanford, and MIT.  Since its 2005 founding, ALA has sent hundreds of grads to America’s elite colleges, where they have outperformed grads from elite U.S. private high schools – kids from Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Rwanda outperforming kids from Groton, Choate, and Exeter. Often, elite colleges try to steer low-test-scoring ALA matriculants to easy majors. Then, four years later, the ALA kid graduates with Honors in a demanding major. Look no further than ALA’s “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind,” who thrived as a Dartmouth engineering major.  

Second, ALA admissions criteria are the exact opposite of the ‘merit’ Team Trump is shoving down TJ’s throat. ALA founder Chris Bradford explains: “Our applicants span a wide range of educational systems, socioeconomic and linguistic backgrounds. We’ve found that GPAs and test scores are largely irrelevant in our admissions process. We look for underlying character attributes. One question is a great predictor of student success: Tell us about a problem you observed in your community, and what you did to address it. Their answers speak volumes about passion, purpose, and resilience.” Bradford adds, “We select kids with the passion and drive to make their world better, not with a passion for achieving grades. It so happens that our kids do really well at university, but our measure of success is how students shape the trajectories of their countries and communities.” 

To America’s detriment, Trump is using foreign students as a bargaining chip to get U.S. universities to bend the knee. This won’t stop with Harvard. Bright young minds from abroad know that Reagan’s “shining city on the hill” is fully hostile. An incredible talent pipeline will go elsewhere. Heart-breaking, given the immense contributions of prior brilliant immigrants. Scientists who fled Germany in the 1930s – Einstein, Fermi, Szilard, Bethe, von Neumann, Teller. Entrepreneurs who founded America’s most successful 20th-century businesses – Carnegie, Goldwyn, Paley, Pfizer, Sarnoff, Goldman, Strauss, Sikorsky. Tech giants defining America’s modern economy – Grove, Brin, Omidyar, Yang, Nadella, Huang, and hypocrite-in-chief Musk. 

Make no mistake, America’s elite universities need a kick in the ass. They need to significantly expand enrollments. Set up campuses across America. End the outrageous admissions preference given to ALDC applicants (Athletes, Legacy, Dean’s List, Children of faculty and staff). Be affordable. Offer real-world internships that equip grads with hirable skills. Stop playing the USNWR rankings game. Adopt authentic admissions processes. Urgently-needed progress, but not Trump’s red meat.

So with the Stupid-O-Meter rising faster than a SpaceX rocket, let’s return to Charles Strouse’s song Tomorrow. He wrote it in 1970, offered it to many musicals, and it was rejected time and again. He persevered. Finally, in 1977, its magic was featured in Annie. After this truly devastating week, it will take years before “the sun comes up” again in America. But with resilience and grit, the sun will come up. 

Nervously yours,

Ted

P.S. Time-Saving Tip: Skip Jake Tapper’s Original Sin recaps Biden’s fading cognition, but barely touches on issues begging for illumination. For example, the consequential call for an unprecedented June debate gets this vapid explanation: “Some on the campaign would argue that they had only a select set of tools for showing that the president was up to the job. . . . And the earlier the better. To put this age issue to rest.” The book reports that Cabinet members found Biden “disoriented,” “out of it,” and barely able to “give you four to six good hours a day.” But no insight into why Cabinet members so critical of Republicans failing to uphold the U.S. Constitution didn’t fulfill their Amendment-25 Constitutional duty to ensure a competent at-all-hours President.