The Three Buts—Time, Standards & Testing

Focus on the Seven Skills that Harvard's Tony Wagner says are essential for survival of today's students. The skills include what many good teachers try to accomplish everyday as they intertwine content with thinking, creative, leadership, and communication skills. But, there are three big buts—time, standards, and testing—blocking the way to the Seven Skills. Learning activities like projects, networking, and collaboration take more time than teacher lecture and question and answer classes. —And how do teachers fit entrepreneurship, imagination, and initiative into their courses when they are concerned with checking off standards and making sure their students know how to tackle standardized testing? One blog reader commented that the pressure doesn't just come from testing, for part of the blame must be attributed to parents who want specific feedback—grade type, test-type, and percentile ratings feedback. That's true, but haven't we all heard parents complain about how much time their children spend practicing how to take tests? Maybe that's the beginning of understanding that something's wrong. Parental pressure could change things, couldn't it? Yes – but then again it could become just another but without changes in the path to successful college admissions.