The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills our Children Need - and What We Can Do About it

Tony Wagner became disillusioned with the education system after spending time working as a teacher and administrator. In Global Achievement Gap, he identifies the problem with the education system and proposes solutions. He levels significant criticism at the "testing system." High stakes tests that are required for graduation have encouraged teachers to teach towards the test. Alas, the tests are created in a way that makes them easy to grade. This results in kids spending time learning facts rather than how to think. AP classes are also geared towards the test, with students required to memorize a great breadth of material rather then truly understand it. The importance of SAT and ACT tests also creates significant problems.
Testing is just one of the problems teachers face. There are many attempts at "education reform" that appear. Teachers are often presented with the "improvements of the day." The application of these new ideas takes time, but rarely sticks. Teachers become accustomed to going through the motions, knowing that these ideas will fade in a while. There are also "standardized curriculums" such as those in Now Child Left Behind. Teachers become "drones" instead of educators.
Teachers also receive minimal feedback. Administrators are overworked with responsibilities. Evaluations are perfunctory. Rather than look at learning experience, the evaluation focuses on completing a few "required actions." Even when outcomes are taken into account, the outcomes are based on "testing" rather than on actual learning.
What can be done? The author did have good things about the IB curriculum. This includes more detailed writing experiences and discussions on the theory of knowledge. Teachers also need greater feedback in their work. Instead of being isolated in the classroom, teachers should have more opportunity to work with other teachers and learn how to improve their teaching. Teaching itself should focus on students learning rather than recall. Writing and expressing thoughts should be stressed rather than recalling knowledge. Creativity is also important. Learning should also take into account the real world and students' desires for learning. The changes would make it more difficult to provide "standardized evaluation." However, it would result in students really learning rather than "going through the education system."

Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the New Innovation Era

Our current education is stuck in the past. There is an excessive emphasis on the memorization of facts and the application of formulas. These are things that are easy to test on standardized tests. This may have been useful in past centuries where knowledge was difficult to obtain. However, now most everybody carries a device that allows access to vast stores of knowledge and the easy computation. This leaves much of what is learned in school useless. Most students forget the knowledge learned. (In one example, they tested students at the start of the next school year on a "dumbed-down" version of the final exam. The scores went from Bs to Fs.) Today, the problem is not obtaining knowledge, but being able to properly evaluate and discern the truth. People need to be able to do, not know. (A funny example was given of "bicycle riding" and a Bicycle Aptitude Test. We could easily test that students have esoteric knowledge of bicycles, but that is not useful when it comes to riding.)
I'm reminded of the case where a Chemical Engineering department was concerned about the lack of language proficiency of its (mostly non-native English speaking) students. However, most of the foreign students passed the test, while the native English speakers were stuck in "remedial English" classes. Some people had "test knowledge" of English but couldn't communicate, while others could communicate, but couldn't pass the test.
The argument here is starkly different from many education reformers and education apologists. We can let other countries excel at tests. What we need are more creative thinkers. Teachers are doing a horrible job in part because of the system they are in. Most of the skills learned in school are irrelevant. Lecture courses are largely irrelevant these days. Instead education should be focused on helping students to learn. Multiple choice tests are easy to grade and fit people to a curve, but they just don't help. We should not deny students resources available. Don't teach towards the test. Let people learn what interests them. It is almost an "unschooling" within a school that is advocated. It is time to stop 19th century education in the 21st century.