Trump spots true trend, Dems education pessimism and other commentary

“Early decision” for college admissions used to be “a niche option” that only “a limited number of selective colleges” offered, not now, “many top schools reserve half to three-quarters of their entering class” for students willing to “submit” to “restrictive terms” without awareness about final costs, gripes Daniel Currell at The New York Times.It serves the schools well, but “forces 17- and 18-year-olds to make life-altering decisions without comparing options” and “pits the interests of teenage novices” against mighty institutions that will even “blacklist” high schools whose applicants “renege on their commitments.” Ban this practice as an “important step toward revitalizing a culture of learning on our campuses.”Skeptics who say trying “to shrink the gap between rich and poor students is a fool’s errand” tend “to reside on the political left,” fumes the Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait.The left’s “rapturous” embrace of junk studies that poo-poo clear gains shows “just how eager progressives are to debunk any apparent success in education reform.” Why deny the “many examples of cities, states, and school systems that have developed effective and scalable ways to shrink education gaps”? Because “these reforms are challenging to enact,” plus “teachers’ unions loathe accountability” (including “anything that makes it easy to fire a low-performing teacher”) while “affluent parents dislike the stress that comes with standardized testing.” Democrats prefer “avoiding reforms that unsettle their coalition.”The Trump team has a point about how “trends” of “mass immigration” and the “Islamification” of Europe “predict the continent’s ‘civilizational erasure,’ ” observes The Spectator’s Gavin Mortimer: Berlin’s “Jews and gays” are urged to “hide their identity” in Arab precincts; 10% of French Jews have “left the country” since 2000.

This “erasure...