Tony Wagner's The Global Achievement Gap Is More Relevant than Ever
When checking out Amanda Ripley's The Smartest Kids in the World, which argues that American education is falling dangerously behind other nations, I stumbled across Tony Wagner's six-year-old The Global Achievement Gap. Wagner begins with a frightening anecdote - the type that could drive today's frenzied assault on teachers.
A world renowned molecular scientist sent two sons to a Cambridge, Massachusetts school. One had a great experience, being inspired by an awesome teacher who used project-based learning and taught hands-on science. The other son had a "totally different" experience. His teacher offered none of the "fun stuff." That teacher's test prep approach to instruction drove the love of learning out of class.
Today, such an anecdote could prompt more calls to fire bad teachers. But, both of the classes in Wagner's story had the same teacher! The difference was the increased pressure to conform to test-driven accountability had driven excellent teaching from the classroom.
I don't have the expertise to answer the question of whether we have an overall crisis in public education, as opposed to the question of whether it is mostly high-challenge schools that are failing. Ripley and Wagner make a good case, however, that our schools do not teach critical thinking in an engaging manner.
I'm more impressed with Wagner's methodology. He summarized international PISA data, for instance, in order to estimate where students of different nations stand in terms of access to instruction that emphasizes critical and creative thinking. More importantly, Wagner had conducted "walk throughs" of classrooms across the nation. He and his guests, including staff for the Gates Foundation, invariably were disappointed by the lack of engaging instruction.
Today, the discussion about paths to better teaching usually lead to more rigorous Tony Wagner's The Global Achievement Gap Is More Relevant than Ever | John Thompson: