“My mother made me a scientist,” recalled physicist Isidor Rabi, Nobel Prize laureate. “‘Izzy,’ she would say, ‘did you ask a good question today?’” Another Nobel laureate, Elie Wiesel, has likewise ...

Corrected: A previous version of this story included a misspelling of Jeffrey Greene’s name. There are no stupid questions. But when it comes to the common core, teachers are finding that their ...