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 (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: century skills, global achievement gap, continuous partial attention, The Global Achievement Gap, Schools That Work, Closing the Gap (more...)

Editorial Reviews

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Wagner, a Harvard education professor, begins by offering his astute assessment of secondary education in the U.S. today and how it fails to produce graduates who are “jury ready” (i.e., able to analyze an argument, weigh evidence, and detect bias). He then presents a concise manifesto for the steps needed to “reinvent the education profession.” His thesis revolves around “Seven Survival skills”—the core competencies he deems necessary for success both in college and in the twenty-first-century workforce. These encompass problem solving and critical thinking, collaboration across networks, adaptability, initiative, effective oral and written communication, analyzing information, and developing curiosity and imagination. Wagner visits a wide spectrum of schools, both public and private, meets with teachers and administrators, and demonstrates how these survival skills have been forgotten in the preparation for mandatory tests. He stresses the importance of being able to analyze new information and apply it to new situations in the “global knowledge economy,” then details the programs, including team teaching, at a few innovative schools that are effectively meeting this challenge. --Deborah Donovan

Product Description

Despite the best efforts of educators, our nation’s schools are dangerously obsolete. Instead of teaching students to be critical thinkers and problem-solvers, we are asking them to memorize facts for multiple choice tests. This problem isn’t limited to low-income school districts: even our top schools aren’t teaching or testing the skills that matter most in the global knowledge economy. Our teens leave school equipped to work only in the kinds of jobs that are fast disappearing from the American economy. Meanwhile, young adults in India and China are competing with our students for the most sought-after careers around the world.

Education expert Tony Wagner has conducted scores of interviews with business leaders and observed hundreds of classes in some of the nation’s most highly regarded public schools. He discovered a profound disconnect between what potential employers are looking for in young people today (critical thinking skills, creativity, and effective communication) and what our schools are providing (passive learning environments and uninspired lesson plans that focus on test preparation and reward memorization).

He explains how every American can work to overhaul our education system, and he shows us examples of dramatically different schools that teach all students new skills. In addition, through interviews with college graduates and people who work with them, Wagner discovers how teachers, parents, and employers can motivate the “net” generation to excellence.

An education manifesto for the twenty-first century, The Global Achievement Gap is provocative and inspiring. It is essential reading for parents, educators, business leaders, policy-makers, and anyone interested in seeing our young people succeed as employees and citizens.

For additional information about the author and the book, please go to www.schoolchange.org


 

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (August 11, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465002293
• ISBN-13: 978-0465002290
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #7,333 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Overview of How Schools are Stuck in the Past, January 7, 2009

By	Bryan K. Long "EnergyForAmerica.US" (Palo Alto, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Wagner argues that the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, which attempts to close the achievement gap between our best and worst schools, has instead left us with schools that are less effective than ever in preparing our children for college, work and life. Our schools are still mired in educational content and methods from the industrial age; our children get more of the skills they really need outside of school, from extracurricular activities, personal exploration and social networking, if they are fortunate enough to have those opportunities.

Today's corporate work environment consists of clusters of business expertise distributed globally and connected via high-speed communications links. Workers collaborate in their local team and with other teams around the world to define and solve open-ended problems. In today's fast-changing, complex environment, teams are given broad objectives and asked to find the best way to achieve them. There are no pre-defined "right answers" in the business world, only profitable and unprofitable strategies. Similarly, there are seldom any "right answers" in politics, or healthcare, or any other aspect of society - including education. As adults, we have learned that history is always a selective interpretation of past events, and that the most effective communicators often break the established conventions. Yet in our schools we drill on facts and basic skills, and seldom encourage or even tolerate questioning, innovation, exploration, or collaboration.

Wagner presents seven "survival skills" that students should be learning in school in order to prepare for college and adult life:

* Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
* Collaboration Across Networks and Leading by Influence
* Agility and Adaptability
* Initiative and Entrepreneurialism
* Effective Oral and Written Communication.
* Accessing and Analyzing Information
* Curiosity and Imagination

Yet, according to a NIH study published in Science (2007), 5th-graders in middle-class public schools across the United States spent 90% of their time in their seats listening to the teacher or working alone, and only 7% of their time working in groups. Further, the average 5th grader received 5 times as much instruction in rote learning than they received instruction focused on problem solving or reasoning.

The US high school graduation rate is only 70%, and 40% of all students who enter college must take remedial courses. It is estimated that 50% of students starting college never complete a college degree. Wagner's interviews with students and professors suggest that what is missing is not content knowledge, but competencies. In core classes and even in AP courses, students are drilled in specific content and vocabulary necessary to pass standardized tests, rather than trained in open-ended inquiry, assessment, reasoning, collaboration and presentation.

Wagner takes us beyond the usual complaints about tenure and unions to examine disfunctional structural components of the educational system. In general, degree programs for teaching and school administration suffer the same flaw of content over competencies. Once they graduate, teachers are seldom given more than checklist evaluations, and rarely sit in on one another's classrooms or collaborate for instructional improvement. Instead, Wagner suggests, most teachers have little recourse other than to re-discover effective teaching on their own, in a hit-or-miss manner. As a consequence, not only are best practices not promulgated, but there is little consensus among teachers about what constitutes good teaching.

Wagner also looks at the problem of how our current teaching practices fail to engage and motivate students. Outside of school, our children have team sports and group activities, and are immersed in the Internet world of interactivity, social networking, and visual information access. Despite legitimate concerns about addictive behavior, violent content and cyber-bullying, Wagner points out that our kids online experience, including even gaming, is much more relevant to the kind of activity found in most information-intensive careers. Our children want group connections, open-ended exploration, immediate feedback response, and relevance. Multi-tasking, search, and filtering are natural tasks to them, while they have little patience for long, linear, non-visual texts.

Our schools offer students little of what engages them. Instead of group activity, they get one-way lectures and individual worksheets. Instead of open-ended exploration, they get drills and tests. Instead of rich interactive, multimedia information, they get dry textbooks. Wagner argues that most high-school school drop-outs occur not because the student lacks ability, but because they lack motivation. School does not engage them, and they correctly perceive a lack of relevancy to their current and future lives.

Finally, Wagner offers us some profiles of a few schools that are "doing it right". While it is wonderful to see such examples, they are all small schools. It is probably not feasible nor desirable to open hundreds of thousands of new schools in every neighborhood, and Wagner doesn't offer much perspective on how we can translate these examples to the large schools that make up most of our national school system. But perhaps it is better if we all collaborate on solving that problem! I highly recommend this book by Tony Wagner as a starting point.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond "test-prep" and towards "life-prep", September 9, 2008

By	Tan Huynh "Mr.Huynh" (New Orleans, LA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Finally a text that outlines school reform without the need of an masters degree to access it. Wanger recommends that schools focus on teaching mental processes by teaching content rather than making content the end goal. The need to develop competencies will prepare our students for a global economy where they will compete with students in and outside the US.

All teachers, administrators, school boards, universities with teacher certification programs, parents, business owners, community leaders, and policy makers who are frustrated but optimistic about school reform should invest time to read this book because it lays out causes of the global achievement gap, identifies core competencies, and highlight schools that serve as models for an achievable school reform.

In addition to the large implications this book might have for the education world, it is valuable for helping me transform my approach to teaching.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Educating For The Future, November 8, 2008

By	Paul Hosse (Louisville, KY. USA) - See all my reviews

As a part time college professor, I've been a big proponent of quality education for decades. Quality education leads to quality employees and that attracts well paying jobs. That, in turn, increases the local tax base which funds better roads, sewers, parks, along with more police officers, firefighters, EMS, and improves the overall quality of life in the community. Tony Wagner's book, The Global Achievement Gap, is a tour de force for anyone interested in America's school system. We are fast becoming a nation of underachievers in a society which rewards mediocrity. We are graduating students without a basic understanding math, English, science, or history. We've all but cut out art and music from their curriculum. But whatever you do, don't interfere with their sports programs! Mr. Wagner delves into why our children are failing behind the rest of the world and what we can do about it before it's too late. The dumbing down of our children has to stop now. I urge everyone interested in our school system to read Mr. Wagner's book now!