yielded only one solid correlation with high achievement: larger homework assignments. (Another finding: The more parents help with homework, the lower their children's achievement.) And other studies show that homework levels, at least between 1960 and 1970, declined in the United States.
Lerner concludes that U.S. educators and parents do not demand enough of children. Since the advent of "open education" during the 1960s, she contends, standards for everything from school attendance...