Tony Wagner's Blog

This conference was sponsored by two senior members of the European Parliament and organized by The African Leadership Academy. Attendees were from around the world and asked excellent questions. You can watch Tony’s presentation and the q&a here.

Tony recently sat down with one of Europe’s best interviewers, Zuberoa Marcos from El Pais. The full 40 minute video is available to view here.

Tony comments on the fallacy of “all kids, college ready” and the alternatives in a 4 minute excerpt from the interview here.

Tony recently gave two keynotes at the New Zealand National Principals Conference in Wellington. The first one on The Future of Work is available here.

Tony’s second keynote, What Does It Mean To Be A Change Leader, is available for the first time on YouTube here. Note: his remarks begin at 14:15.

In January 2018, Tony was the guest of Hawaii PBS CEO Leslie Wilcox on her award-winning TV program, LongStoryShort. He talks about his own early school experiences, why he became a teacher, and some of his failures. The show offers a sneak preview of some themes from his forthcoming memoir, to be published in 2019. You can watch the program here.

By Tony Wagner

This month, approximately 3.5 million high school seniors will be granted diplomas.

The rest of us will (and should) applaud their achievements, but we must also stop and consider: What did these students have to do to earn their diplomas, and what, exactly, has their schoolwork prepared them for?

In 1892, The Committee of Ten, led by Harvard President Charles Eliot, created a standardized framework for the high school curriculum that, in turn, dictated essential prerequisites for college admissions. This system requires that students earn between 18 and 24 “Carnegie Units” in order to graduate. A Carnegie Unit is a standardized measure of “seat time served” in a given class — roughly 120 hours of a class over the course of a year.

Students’ grades in a particular class are supposed to represent how well they served that time, and students’ grade point average and class rank are taken as measures of how well individuals have performed compared to peers. And these numbers still make up the typical high school transcript, which is required by virtually every college and university in America in order to be considered for admission.

But these measures are more than a century old, and hopelessly obsolete. In this era of innovation, all students need essential skills and dispositions for work, learning, and citizenship — habits of mind and heart that cannot be measured by Carnegie Units.

Students who can take initiative, learn through trial and error, collaborate, persist, understand and solve problems through interdisciplinary approaches, and who have strong moral foundations are set up to thrive in the future. The students who are merely good at the “game of school” — those with high grades but without those skills — are not.

And if school is a game, then “losing” comes with stark emotional consequences. Too many students in our “best” suburban and independent schools increasingly experience high school as a cutthroat competition for admission to a selective college. Bright and resilient students who receive poor grades or don’t get into the “right” college often see themselves as losers for life.

There is a better way.

In March of this year, some of America’s leading independent schools announced the creation of the Mastery Transcript Consortium (MTC). It is an effort to create an entirely new way to assess and report the quality of student work — one that is based on real evidence of mastery, rather than a grade or time spent in a particular class.

The MTC is still in development; it will be built, refined and tested over the next several years.

But the goal is to finally see students’ educational record in clearer focus, and in three dimensions.

The new reporting will indicate the skills and knowledge that students have mastered. But it will also include qualities of character that make their humanity visible and help admissions officers make better decisions when it comes to an applicant’s “fit.” The design will help colleges better understand students’ skill sets and potential to succeed on campus, and allows students to present themselves more authentically to admissions officers.

Since the March announcement, more than 100 schools have signed up to join in the discussion and development of the Mastery Transcript, including renowned schools such as Phillips Andover Academy and Punahou in Hawaii, President Obama’s alma mater.

And the Edward E. Ford Foundation just gave the Consortium a $2 million grant to develop its technology platform. Once there is a proof of concept, the Mastery Transcript Consortium membership will be open to all public and private high schools at a cost commensurate with each institution’s resources.

How many of us studied a foreign language for four years in high school, but graduated unable to carry on an extended conversation in that language? How many of us did well enough in high school geometry and algebra, yet struggle to use math to solve real-world problems? In the 21st century, academic content knowledge still matters, but essential skills and dispositions matter more. The Mastery Transcript Consortium is developing ways to record what students can do with what they know.

“Each Mastery Credit applied to a transcript signifies complete mastery of a specific skill, knowledge block or habit of mind as defined by the crediting high school,” says the Consortium’s founder, Scott Looney. Reading the electronic transcript “will allow college admission officers to dive deep within a transcript to see the specific standards of the sending high school and actual evidence of student work and mastery, thus giving depth and transparency to the student’s work record.”

There are many ways to acquire and demonstrate mastery. Some students may choose internships to gain mastery of a particular competency, take college courses or work in another country. The genius of the Mastery Transcript Consortium is that it will register and reward individual students’ achievements and choices while still providing a common framework for assessment.

After 124 years, it’s time to reimagine the high school curriculum for the 21st century and to encourage teaching and assessment of the skills and dispositions that matter most. Our students deserve a more accurate measure, and they shouldn’t have to wait another century for their transcripts to better reflect their accomplishments.

Tony spoke at the Fairfax County Public Schools Leadership Conference in August 2016. It can be viewed here. His talks begins at 2.32. His advice to education leaders begins at minute 24.

Q&A begins at minute 35.

America desperately needs to redefine ‘college and career ready’

Published: Aug 5, 2016 7:38 a.m. ET Marketwatch.com

For every 100 who start college, just 25 get degrees and attractive jobs

The majority of kids who pursue college are getting disappointing outcomes.

By

TED

DINTERSMITH

TONY

WAGNER

Well-intentioned national K-12 education goals are jeopardizing the futures of millions of kids. Our stated goal is making all kids “college and career ready.” The reality, though, is that we’ve turned schools into college prep factories, leaving the vast majority of kids ill-prepared for career or life.

Our society views college as the gateway to the American Dream — something all kids should aspire to. From the words of our presidents to our T-shirts and hats, we equate college attainment with success. The better the college, the better the person. No college degree, and you’re a second-class citizen. Reflecting these biases, college readiness now dominates high-school curriculum, K-12 standards, and standard-of- learning assessments.

But here’s the problem. The content our kids study to become “college ready” is largely useless in careers, or life. We push them to perform tasks in the curriculum to make it easy to rank order them for college placement.

This all-consuming focus leaves little time for learning the competencies needed for career or citizenship. Even worse, the majority of kids who trust our advice to pursue college are getting disappointing outcomes.

The content our kids study to become “college ready” is largely useless in careers, or life.

In our science classes, core concepts get lost in a sea of definitions and formulas. Kids study electricity by memorizing Ohm’s Law (a staple of AP Physics) without understanding the science. Consider the hapless MIT students who, at their college graduation, couldn’t take a lightbulb, wire, and battery and light up the bulb. Huh? What if all kids — not just those in Career/Technical Education — learned electricity by taking apart fuse boxes, helping a master electrician wire a house, and building a wind turbine to produce electricity for the local grid? This learning is valuable to everyone, whether they become master electricians, Ph.D. research scientists, or normal adults coping with home electrical issues.

But hands-on learning doesn’t lend itself to standardized testing, and is viewed by academic elites as a grubby, blue-collar distraction. So Ohm’s Law it is.

High school math revolves around drilling on the low-level procedures (think factoring polynomials, trig identities, integrals by hand) that permeate the SAT and ACT tests. If we relegated these tasks to a smartphone app, students could learn math with real career value, like statistics, data analytics, estimation, math modeling, algorithm development, financial literacy, social media optimization, and computer programming. Our priorities have consequential career opportunity costs for all kids. And it’s tragic when algebra (something few adults ever use) keeps someone from getting their high-school diploma and they end up homeless or in jail.

In English classes, far too much time is spent memorizing the parts of speech, grammar rules, and the terms and techniques for the kinds of “literary analysis” done in college. None of these activities help students to learn to organize their thoughts, write well in a variety of genres, and deliver effective oral presentations. Yet these are the skills that employers tell us are most lacking among young adults.

Female execs have this surprising thing in common(2:28)

What do female execs have in common? According to one study, 94% played a sport in high school and 61% said sports helped them succeed. Tennis star Serena Williams and Olympic gold medalist Missy Franklin talk about the importance of sports.

For much of the last century, college was an affordable path to a good job.

But today’s world is different. For every 100 kids who start college, just 25 get degrees and attractive jobs. Some 45 drop out, and another 30 graduate but end up under- or unemployed, reaching the end of the college rainbow only to find a pot of rejection letters and debt. But our unquestioned embrace of colleges has given them carte blanche to jack up tuition for courses stuck in the Dark Ages. Meanwhile, millions of high-quality jobs in our country go unfilled, as our schools churn out “college ready” kids with no employable skills.

Look at Google

Employers are recognizing the disconnect between college and career readiness. Google, for instance, changed its hiring strategies after Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations, analyzed their data and found no correlation between job performance and an employee’s GPA, SAT’s, or college pedigree. Google now considers an applicant’s ability to collaborate and to perform authentic job-related challenges. Now, they hire many new employees who never went to college.

Our education goals have lost touch with what matters most — helping students develop essential skills, competencies, and character traits. It’s time to reimagine the goals for U.S. education, and hold all schools — from kindergarten through college — accountable for teaching the skills and nurturing the dispositions most needed for learning, work, and citizenship.

Let’s set our overarching goal as producing students who are “life-ready,” and treat colleges as one potential means to this end.

Ted Dintersmith has a Ph.D in engineering from Stanford, was a top-ranked venture capitalist, executive produced the acclaimed film “Most Likely To Succeed,” and went to all 50 states in the last year advocating for education change. Tony Wagner is an Expert In Residence at the Harvard Innovation Lab and a Senior Research Fellow at the Learning Policy Institute. They are co-authors of “Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era.”

The Society for Organizational Learning, founded by Peter Senge, featured an in-depth interview with Tony in a recent issue. Available here.

I recently spent a week in Australia speaking to business, government, military, and education leaders in a series of programs sponsored by Price WaterhouseCoopers. Watch the 4 minute video on the education outcomes that matter most and the importance of re-thinking STEM here.

I recently spent a week in Australia speaking to business, government, military, and education leaders in a series of programs sponsored by Price WaterhouseCoopers. Watch the 4 minute video on the education outcomes that matter most and the importance of re-thinking STEM here.