BretWagner.com

We’re teach­ing the wrong things in school.

We are focus­ing too much on reward­ing what the indi­vid­ual knows rather than how they work with oth­ers and prob­lem solve in a team.

The cur­rent push for stan­dard­ized test­ing only rein­forces this mis­placed focus. States are using these stan­dard­ized tests to deter­mine who grad­u­ates, how fund­ing is dis­trib­uted, teacher pay, and what schools stay open and which close.

Using a mea­sure­ment tool to deter­mine those things is not wrong.  Schools are just using the wrong tool to measure.

Instead of test­ing, develop a project-based cur­ricu­lum that empha­sizes 21st cen­tury skills like tech­nol­ogy skills, live and career skills, cre­ativ­ity and crit­i­cal thinking.

Stu­dents need to be eval­u­ated on their abil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate ideas, work within teams, think crit­i­cally on real-world prob­lems, and demon­strate life skills such as dis­ci­pline and character.