Today's students could fail at life, says Harvard's Tony Wagner, because their schools are too busy teaching to the test  

Wagner said the problem is that you can have all the equipment
and technology you want, but "if you don't teach kids how to think, how
to think beyond multiple choice, you've got a problem."

He told another story illustrating this same problem:

"I went to a school once that had a lot of AP courses. I went into
one AP course on government. Here was this teacher asking kids
questions, and of course, there's the one kid who keeps raising his
hand, but the rest of the class was dead. The teacher asks the
questions, the one kid raises his hand to answer, the teacher calls on
him, the teacher moves on to the next question. This gets repeated over
and over again. Finally the teacher asks a question the one kid doesn't
know: ‘What's the Iron Triangle?' No one raises [a] hand. The poor
teacher, flustered that he has to cover so much in so little time, says
hurriedly, ‘OK, here's how you answer this one' and writes the answer
on the board."

Wagner continued: "The problem is that teachers are teaching to
tests--telling kids answers that they don't think [of] for
themselves--and that's why students may pass high school but can't cut
it in college or in the workforce."

1. Problem-solving and critical thinking;
2. Collaboration across networks and leading by influence;
3. Agility and adaptability;
4. Initiative and entrepreneurship;
5. Effective written and oral communication;
6. Accessing and analyzing information; and
7. Curiosity and imagination.

More information at: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=56127

Wagner's site is http://www.schoolchange.org/