Lynne Munson, PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF COMMON CORE. Ms. Munson is also president of Six Consulting, Inc., which provides education policy advice and research to clients at the state and national levels. She served as Deputy Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) from 2001–2005, overseeing all agency operations. During her tenure, the NEH awarded over 3,600 grants totaling more than $442 million for institution-building projects, in addition to basic scholarly research, preservation and archival projects, museum exhibitions, and documentary films.

She is also Adjunct Fellow at the Center for College Affordability and Productivity where she writes on the issue of higher education endowment spending. In September 2007, Ms. Munson testified before the Senate Finance Committee on the issue of college and university endowment hoarding and has advised Senate staff regarding potential policy remedies in this area.

Ms. Munson led the first United States government delegation to Afghanistan in 2005 to deal with issues of cultural reconstruction. In 2004, she represented the United States at UNESCO meetings in Australia and Japan where she helped to negotiate guidelines for cross-border higher education. In 1998 and 1999 Ms. Munson provided expert testimony on higher education remediation programs to the Board of Trustees of the City University of New York and the Mayor’s Advisory Task Force on CUNY Reform.

Ms. Munson is the author of Exhibitionism: Art in an Era of Intolerance (Ivan R. Dee, 2000) and has written on contemporary cultural and educational issues for numerous national publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Inside Higher Education. She has appeared on CNN, FoxNews, CNBC, C-SPAN, and NPR, and speaks to scholarly and public audiences. Ms. Munson earned a bachelor’s degree at Northwestern University.

June 2, 2009 • Common Core releases Why We’re Behind: What Top Nations Teach Their Students But We Don’t, a report showing that the nations that consistently outrank us on international comparison tests provide their students with a fulsome education in the liberal arts and sciences. Why is this news? Because the U.S. is moving further and further away from this model. Read brief excerpts from the documents featured in the report here and Education Week’s take here.

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Want to learn more about our recent panel questioning the tenets of the 21st century skills movement? See what NYU historian Diane Ravitch, Core Knowledge founder E.D. Hirsch, UVA cognitive scientist Dan Willingham, and Partnership for 21st Century Skills president Ken Kay have to say in this brief, seven-minute video.

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Watch the entire panel discussion (approximately 2 hours). To view the video in full screen mode, click on the full screen icon in the video menu bar. And read coverage of the panel in USA Today and Education Week. The full text of panelists' presentations can be found here.

Common Core's report shows a nation STILL AT RISK. Nearly a quarter of students polled could not identify Adolf Hitler and half had no idea what the Renaissance was. To learn more read the report, press release or stories at ABC News, CBS News, The New York Times, and USA TODAY. Or take the test yourself.

Read Emory Professor Mark Bauerlein on the Partnership for 21st Century Skills

"Anybody who has sat in on curriculum meetings and projects in the humanities has experienced those awkward moments when it comes down to selecting certain contents and materials as essential and required. Traditionalists in the room want to identify core texts, events, figures, and ideas, and on various grounds of historical influence, civic inheritance, and aesthetic virtue they stick with a generally Eurocentric tradition."

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