Whether initiated from the bottom-up or the top-down, any effort to help educators align their practice with the best evidence is going to succeed or fail on the strength of its implementation.

Nineteenth century historian Thomas Carlyle called economics "the dismal science" because of its predictions about scarcity and poverty. Those are immutable features of all societies, which explains why his snarky term remains widely used. Modern economics writer Thomas Sowell captured the same idea, but expanded upon it. "The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it," he wrote. "The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics."

In his “Theses on Feuerbach,” the young Karl Marx proclaimed, “[P]hilosophers have only hitherto interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it” (emphasis in original). Mission statements of several of our preeminent colleges and universities follow suit. The primary purpose of liberal education, according to these formal pronouncements, is not to understand the world but to remake it.

Brandon Darby has a target on his head from the Mexican cartels. Concealing his Second Amendment rights under his vest, he hides among some of the most dangerous people in the Western Hemisphere. With more than half of the 32 Mexican states being run by the cartels, Brandon, a father and family man, understands his life is on the line daily.