One trend that no amount of data can capture is the increasingly routine spinning of notions of "achievement" for ideological purposes. This past fall, a study conducted by the University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy for the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) made a splash with the finding that freshmen at some of America's most elite colleges know more about American history and government than seniors at those same institutions. The researchers asked 14,000 students at 50 colleges nationwide multiple-choice questions about America's history, government, relationship with the world and-that other bedrock measure of American cultural literacy-the "market ...