The Thales Way: The Book That Can Save American Education

Its approach can rescue the nation’s deserving children from today’s failing public schools.

The Thales Way By Robert L. Luddy (Thales Press, 152 pages, $24) Would you be interested in a book on reforming education by a man who created flourishing grade, middle, and high school charter schools, all with waiting lists today, found them too mired in government bureaucracy and so started 13 even more successful purely private campuses in 2007 — and who is willing to share his secrets of success with you? READ MORE: Combatting Academic Hucksters in the Sciences In hiring young people for his large private business, Bob Luddy of Raleigh, North Carolina, ran head-long into the problem shared by other employers — namely, that many potential employees with a public-school education did not have the elemental skills required to hold jobs, some unable to understand basic logic or even to read. As Luddy says in his new book The Thales Way:

I watched so many struggle due to lack of skill, discipline, knowledge, or motivation. Some of our technicians could not understand basic fractions, while others could not read well. At the professional level, they lacked both the rigor and the ability to handle new challenges, which require adaptability and a continuous learning curve.

Unlike most of us, he decided to do something about it.

Luddy first brought together others in his state who were concerned about education. In 1996, he and they had helped North Carolina adopt “charter schools” that were still to be regulated by the state but were freed from some of the more onerous restrictions required for standard public schools. In 1998, he started a grade, middle, and high charter school he called the Franklin Academy, which over the years since became so attractive to parents that it has educated 1,600 students, with long waiting lists. As popular as charter schools became, after a decade Luddy concluded that state government restrictions from so-called educational experts and government bureaucrats made it “virtually impossible to change the K-12 status quo in public scho...