In the continuing debate about American competitiveness in the global economy, politicians and educators alike have pointed not to students' test scores, but to their creativity and ingenuity, as models for the rest of the world. Teaching creativity has been a hot-button topic this fall, from the National Academy of Education's annual meeting in…

The document describes a South Carolina Study Project involving high school students in making decisions relating to their school communities. The project encouraged students to examine and evaluate the ways in which they formed opinions, made value decisions, and checked out the validity of their facts. Students were given training in using…