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>> Kim Ricketts: Good afternoon. And welcome, everyone. My name is Kim Ricketts, and I manage,
along with Kirsten Wiley, the Microsoft Research Visiting Speakers Series.
And today I am truly thrilled to welcome Dr. Tony Wagner to Microsoft Research. Dr. Wagner is here to
discuss his latest work and research into the troubling state of our education system. And most,
importantly, clear steps we can take to reengage children teachers and communities in creating the kind of
schools we need.
And what kind of schools are those? Schools that create curious, flexible and creative problem-solvers, the
kind of individuals our company and companies all over the world seek to hire to stay competitive in the
new global economy.
We all know the world's changed and it's way past time for our schools to catch up. Tony Wagner has
served as co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education since
its inception in 2000.
It's a kind of research and development center for the field of education and an initiative of the Gates
Foundation where Dr. Wagner has served as senior advisor for the past eight years.
He was previously a high school English teacher. So those of you that think he's just in the ivory tower, no,
no. He was a high school English teacher, a principal, a university professor and the first executive director
of Educators for Social Responsibility.
His earlier books include "Change Leadership", "Making the Grade", "Reinventing America's Schools" and
"How Schools Change." So please join me in welcoming Dr. Tony Wagner to Microsoft Research.
>> Tony Wagner: Thank you. It's really a pleasure to be back. I was last here, I think, five or six years
ago, talking about one of my earlier books.
And so I'm really interested to kind of share with you some of the things I've been learning and worrying
about, quite frankly, and then to make lots of time for your questions and comments.
So I'm going to try to keep my initial remarks fairly brief. Two and a half years ago I read "The World is
Flat" and I became very concerned. As you all know, it's increasingly clear that any job that can be turned
into a routine is going to be either off-shored or automated.
The question I began to worry about: What are the skills our young people are going to need in this new
global knowledge economy to get and keep a good job. At the same time it was the beginning of the
buildup of the Iraqi War, and finally acknowledgment that, in fact, yes, there is global warming.
So I was concerned with: What are the skills our young people are going to need to be active and informed
citizens. And are these two educational aspirations in contradiction. Because many educators think they
are, many educators believe that preparing people for the world of work is to prepare them to be
automatons, just obeying orders.
So I decided I'd do a different kind of research. I started interviewing executives from a wide range of
companies, literally from Apple -- sorry. I have to say that, because it's the A word. To Unilever to the U.S.
Army and everybody in between, as well as people who have consulted to senior companies and
executives.
And I asked them: What are the skills you look for in a new hire? And what surprised me was the virtual
consensus among all of the executives and consultants with whom I spoke about the skills that matter most
in today's new work environment.
They are skills that many educators don't see, don't understand, and are really, in fact, rather different than
some of the skills that were required even a decade or two ago.
I'll briefly summarize them, but I'm sure none of this will be a surprise to any of you. First and foremost,
critical thinking and problem solving. Mentioned all of the time by the executives.
But what was interesting was what lay behind that, the comment that was most frequent, was the fact that
for many people they recognized that the heart of critical thinking is the ability to ask good questions.
And as I heard that, I was already worrying: If life is about figuring out the good questions, well, school is
about getting the right answers, right?
So the second survival skill is collaboration across networks and leading by influence. I don't have to tell
this audience that collaboration rarely takes place just in a room any longer. It's all around the globe.
And so understanding and appreciating our cultural differences and, very importantly, being able to lead by
influence, traditional command and control hierarchies are fundamentally a thing of the past, especially in
the best companies.
Again, this is not new news to any of you. The third is agility and adaptability. Again, not new news to you,
but increasingly, today, even if you stay in the same job, the job doesn't stay the same. It's being
restructured and changed continuously. So you have to adapt and be agile.
The fourth survival skill is initiative and entrepreneurialism. And, again, I'm preaching to the choir here. Big
companies are really concerned that they maintain the entrepreneurial spirit in order to keep their
competitive edge and that their employers take initiative.
As general counsel and vice president of Cisco told me, if I have an employee who sets five goals and
meets all five, he's not met my expectations. I need employees who set 10 stretch goals and maybe make
eight of them.
Now, that's a different kind of initiative. The sixth survival skill is effective oral and written communication.
And that's the biggest criticism and complaint of both employers and college teachers; one of the few things
that they agree on, by the way.
Kids don't know how to write. It's not that they don't know how to punctuate or spell, it's that they can't put
forward a reasoned analysis, they don't know how to develop a point of view or argument.
Also, these executives tell me they don't know how to write with voice. They don't know how write
persuasively, and that that's as important as being able to do a sharp analysis.
The sixth survival skill: Accessing and analyzing information. I'm sure that's totally anathema to you all
here. But you know better than most that there's so much information now, there's too much.
Of course, that raises very fundamental questions about an information-based curriculum. But we'll come
to that.
The seventh survival skill: Curiosity and imagination. How many have read "A Whole New Mind" by Daniel
Pink. Some of you know his argument is that in a commoditized world like this, it is the product or service
that stands out that's distinctive that's going to attract the most people. The plain vanilla won't simply cut it
anymore.
All the time during the time I'm listening to these executives doing this research, I'm also, in my other life,
working with educators to help them become more effective change leaders.
And by change leaders, I really mean instructional leaders. I have a very simple and radical theory of
change about education: If you want to improve student outcomes, you have to improve teaching. I lead
what I call learning walks for change leaders in schools.
Not just change leaders, program officers from foundations. So let me give you a couple of vignettes to
illustrate the problem that most concerns me.
I'm in a southern state with 10 or so program officers from the Gates Foundation. We're looking at three of
their early high school, early college high school grantees. We're visiting six classes in each of three
schools over several days, asking the question: Do we see evidence that these kids in these high school
classes are, in fact, going to be ready for college level course work.
Let me discuss what that means and looks like. We go to 18 classes in three schools in three days. We sit
down to debrief at the end of the time together, go around the table, and we come to the consensus that
only one class out of 18 met the standard for really college ready.
I'll give you an example of one of the classes that truly horrified me. It was an advanced placement
chemistry class. It was a chemistry lab. Okay. Good news, right? I don't know how many of you
remember chemistry labs or have seen one lately, I'm not quite sure the difference between a lab
experiment in many cases and a home ec class. The recipe is on the board.
Everybody is surrounding their little ovens, bunson burners, and they're cooking according to the recipe.
But in this case, the four guys I'm watching, surrounding their beaker on the bunson burner, have a
problem. Their beaker is smoking and it's not supposed to. Little problem.
So I'm just watching them, curious to know how are they going to solve this problem, mindful of what these
folks have told me about the skills that matter most.
They're just standing there. And it's very clear to me they're waiting for the teacher who is at his desk to
come over and help them. I said I'm going to engage them, find out what's going on here. So I come up. I
go: What's going on? Don't know.
Your experiment didn't work. Hu-huh. I said: What's your hypothesis about why it didn't work? They kind
of look at each other, shrug. I said: Do you know what a hypothesis is? And one said: Yeah, we had it on
a vocab quiz a while ago, isn't that like an idea of something that's supposed to happen.
College level chemistry, supposedly. Did not really understand the basics of the scientific method.
A few months later I'm in a district where the average annual income is $175,000. There are no private
schools in that district. They don't need one. High school, the only one in the district, is ranked among the
top 50 in the country, according to a leading newspaper publication.
So the superintendent has invited me in to help think about how to create a good definition of what is
effective instruction. I said: Fine, but only on the condition that we go observe classes together first.
She got a little nervous. She had never in her entire career there spanning 17 years gone unannounced
into a high school classroom. For reasons that we'll get to later. That's another whole problem.
But she agrees. And I said: So, okay, what should we look for? She said: I want to see evidence that
students are being challenged to think, in this, one of the best high schools in the country. Good. Great
idea.
So we go to 12 classrooms, all honors and advanced placement classrooms.
I'll give you some vignettes of what we saw. Go into one high school classroom. It's an economics class,
honors economics. Kids are watching a moving. They're watching a movie of a prospector who appears to
be making some kind of trade for goods with a voiceover about something about trading.
I say "appears to" because the soundtrack is so terrible we can barely hear it. The film is faded. But what's
most striking to me is that the kids are sitting with nothing in front of them, not taking any notes. There's no
question on the board. They're just watching a movie.
Go to another class. This is an advanced placement government class. Getting ready for the AP exam.
Kids have just reviewed the answers to an 80-question multiple choice test they've just taken, which is in
fact a practice test for the AP.
The teacher says: Okay, now we're going to practice some of the extended responses that you're going to
have to work on for the AP.
By the way, do you know what extended response means? A paragraph. Some extended response, huh?
So the teacher says: Okay, now, look at this question. This question is about the Iron Triangle, who can
tell me what the Iron Triangle is. Anybody here know what the Iron Triangle is? I didn't either. I had to
Google it. Apparently not too many of the kids did either.
Long silence. Finally, some kid mutters something in the front of the room which we in the back can't hear,
which is, by the way, the norm in schools. You can never hear. You don't need to because it's really only
the teacher who is trying to figure out if the kid got the right answer. Once the teacher gets half an earful of
the right answer, it's on to the next question.
He says: Great, good. Now give me three reasons why the Iron Triangle is undemocratic. Silence. So he
says: All right. Let's list some possible answers to this question. And he's clearly getting inpatient. Goes
to the next one, throws the question on the overhead projector. No smart boards here. He says: Okay,
now this question is about bureaucracy. Let me tell you how to answer this question. Advanced
placement.
I'm in Virginia Beach a few months ago. Virginia Beach has a new superintendent. By the way, a
nationally renowned district, has always had great test scores. Has been nationally recognized for its work.
As a new superintendent, the strategic planning process involves 250 community members in an
auditorium. One spring evening they're talking about what are the most important outcomes for high school
graduates? Virtual agreement, total agreement, that it's not about content, it's about 21st century skills.
Critical thinking, problem solving absolutely at the top of the list. Next on the list: Students who are
independent learners.
So the next day I'm with the superintendent and his team conducting a learning walk. We're going to go
look in classrooms because that's a precondition of my working with the district.
And I said: Let's look for evidence that these students are being challenged to think critically to solve
problems and are being taught to be independent learners, right?
Two schools are handpicked for our visit ahead of time. A middle school and a high school. And the
principal in each one of these two schools has handpicked six teachers for us to observe.
We're going as a team. The senior leadership of this district. So we've got six classes in middle school
and six in the high school. We sit down and debrief and go around the room and everybody is saying the
same thing: No evidence of critical thinking being taught. No evidence that students are being taught to be
independent learners.
And you can see the superintendent is kind of becoming first puzzled and then outraged. Then he finally
turns to the group and says: You know I think I understand the problem. The problem is these teachers
are not bad teachers; they're in fact good teachers, and they're doing exactly what we've asked them to do.
Teach to the test. Increasingly in American schools today there's only one curriculum and it's test prep.
Now, if it were a good test, it might be okay. I believe in accountability. I'm not arguing against
accountability. I'm not arguing against testing.
But we are trying to do accountability on the cheap. When you compare the kinds of tests we give to the
kinds of tests given in Europe, for example, where you have a two-hour extended essay exam or where
you have kids interviewed about what they know and have to defend what they've learned, it's a radically
different kind of accountability. And test prep there looks very different than test prep here.
So the global achievement gap is the gap between what we were teaching and testing even in our very
best schools versus the skills that all students are going to need for college, careers and citizenship.
Because I really came to understand that the skills you need for the world of work today are the same skills
you need to succeed in college today, and they're the same skills I believe we want all citizens to have in
order for our democracy to thrive and to be vibrant.
So let me stop at this point. It's enough of kind of a teaser, I hope, because I'm really interested in your
questions and your comments because I'm here to learn as much as I am to share. Yes, sir.
>>: As a parent in the context of preparing their child for their next stage, the next stage being, let's say,
university, the entrance to university is predicated on certain capabilities, that if you do not have, when
you're in high school, you're at risk of getting in.
So sometimes it's -- everywhere you are and what you said, I struggle with rationalizing that to what I'm
learning universities expect from students in terms of how they ought to be worthy candidates to get in. So
how do we reconcile that?
>> Tony Wagner: That's a really interesting and complex question. First of all, have you read the news in
the last week that there's been a special commission of college admissions folks led by Harvard's Dean of
Admissions who are urging that colleges drop SAT and ACT requirements. There are already 750 colleges
and universities now where they are optional.
But they're saying, first and foremost, these are not teaching or testing the skills that matter most. Let me
finish quickly, because you've asked an important question that doesn't deserve a simple answer.
The last chapter of the book I profile three high schools that are doing a dramatically better job teaching
and assessing the seven survival skills.
There are also Schools that refuse to teach to the state tests and, yet, score higher than most on the same
state tests and there are also schools who refuse to offer advanced placement courses because they
believe it dumbs down the curriculum. What's their track record? Because it matters.
What you're saying, I'm a parent, I'm with you. I have three kids. High Tech High, San Diego, no AP
courses, no teaching to the test. 55 percent minority. Same demographics as the larger community of San
Diego. More kids accepted into Stanford than any other non-legacy high school in the country. More kids,
virtually 100 percent go to college.
27 percent of them major in science, engineering and mathematics. Why? They didn't take any AP
courses. How could that be? I'm walking down the hallway of the school visiting it for the second time. I'm
suddenly hit in the back of the head by a Ping-Pong ball. I turn around. There's the physics class sitting in
front of a catapult, standing in front of a catapult with their clipboards measuring trajectory and force.
So their learning is hands-on. And, indeed, all of their requirements are, all of the students in the three high
schools that I looked at require an extended work internship as part of their academic work.
All of them require an extended project. All of them require a digital portfolio. So, in other words, when
those kids go to apply to college and they can show or point to the URL where their digital portfolio is public
and they can describe their projects and they can describe their work internship, they actually have a
competitive advantage over the kids who have had none of those experiences.
So you as a parent are going to take a risk when you go to a school like that. But in my view, you take a
risk when you send your kid to a test prep school. There's risks on both sides. And I say that by way of
having taught in one of the most elite private schools in the country as well.
>>: You're talking about survival skills. And certainly makes perfect sense that you ask executives what
they're looking for. But looks like a society which moves beyond that in a hierarchy need, a society that is
struggling to survive. Feels like the skills we should also be looking for are the higher ones, 300 years ago,
which would have been music, art, theology, philosophy. Do we have the luxury to go into those now and
prepare -- I guess prepare people for life where they'll have more pleasure than anyone in the past?
>> Tony Wagner: Again, wonderful questions. That's why I love coming here. 25 years ago they were
saying that we should prepare for the leisure life. Well, meanwhile, Americans are working 20 percent
more hours than they did 25 years ago. I'm not sure that future is coming, number one. Number two, you
talk about how to stimulate curiosity and imagination. The arts, of course, play an absolute vital role, even
as they do in problem solving. I believe the arts have a absolutely critical role in schools.
Finally, I want to make the point, I call them survival skills because what's new here is that these are skills
that virtually all of us are going to need to be adept and successful in a rapidly changing world.
There are other skills: Tenacity. Having a moral kind of compass and so on that are not new, that have
always been survival skills for the soul. Survival skills for civilization.
I referenced those at the end as not being anything new. It's these other skills that, in my view, are new,
comparatively speaking. Did I answer your question?
>>: Yes.
>>: I'm a parent at the [indiscernible] School District. Our superintendent just left to go to AP, and I call it
our prison, AP all the time, which is the middle school. I have one son who dropped out and one who
opted out for a different school for a private high school.
The institution itself, the district is a status or static object. How do we as parents and people working in
the education field create change? Because I think it needs radical change.
>> Tony Wagner: I couldn't agree more. I think it's a hard thing, because educators want to sort of say
we're the professionals, we don't need your help or advice. But I think you're also the consumers, and you
have to consistently say: What do you expect your high school graduates to know and be able to do? How
are you assessing those skills?
What is the evidence that we are getting better and better at teaching those skills? I think, particularly for
those who are in the business world, educators do not understand what the skills are today that are
required to succeed, neither in college nor in the workplace. They simply don't understand. They're out of
touch.
I think you have to press them. You have to say: Look, these are the skills that matter. Show me, show
me where you are teaching these. Show me how you are assessing these.
Show me the evidence that advanced placement tests measure the kinds of skills that matter the most.
When I say show me, I don't want to see a bar graph here. I wasn't to talk to recent college graduates who
have taken these AP exams and AP tests, as I did, by the way, in the book.
What they'll say to you is: Look, this is an exam -- I talked to a kid who went to an AP academy, which
means he selected out and took 10 or 11 courses and went to MIT and totally burned out. He said all I did
was learn how to take tests. That's not learning. And he said, by the way, in the first year of MIT is the
same. Dropped out, went to Harvard for a semester. Came back, changed his major from science, which
was so rote memorized driven to mathematics, is a happier person, but he's decided he doesn't want to be
a scientist, his life's dream, because of those bad experiences in school, he wants to be a teacher.
>>: So I've designed a school that actually hits every one of your seven skills. I'm sitting here patting
myself on the back, but I think the one thing that's key that's maybe missing is joy as a factor.
>> Tony Wagner: Absolutely.
>>: Our kids go to school every day and there is joy in the hall. There's joy in the halls. At High Tech
High, who I worked with, there's joy there, which means learning is a joyful experience, and they want to be
lifelong learners.
>> Tony Wagner: I'm so glad you said that, because the other major sort of scary thing that loomed in this
work that I did, a little context, about the only thing that educators and business leaders agree on is the fact
they think this generation has a work ethic problem. Look at all of you, kind of loafing during your lunch
hour, I can see you clearly have a work ethic problem. [laughter]
I turned that statement that was sort of conventional thinking into a question. Is this generation
unmotivated or differently motivated. I started interviewing dozens of young people and the people that
worked with them. I came to understand that, in fact, they're very differently motivated. And if we want to
maintain the enthusiasm and joy of learning, if we want to maintain that sense of curiosity, we need to
understand the needs of today's learners.
First and foremost, they're habituated, in their own words, to instant gratification on the Internet. For them,
a bad day is a slow Internet connection. They can't imagine dial-up. That's along with dinosaurs.
Dinosaurs and dial up. Back in the way distant scary past.
But more importantly, yes, they've got some attention issues. Yes, they're multi-tasking and so on and you
can raise questions and concerns about that, but what I don't think we fully understand is the extent to
which they are learning from each other all of the time on the net. They're learning to problem solve
together. They're learning to work together. And even, more importantly, they're creating. They're using
Web 2.0, I don't need to tell this audience, as a tool to communicate not merely communicate or gather
information.
So they're collaborating with peers. They're learning in networks. They are creating uploading content to
the web everywhere except in school.
So from my point of view the curiosity and the joy that you rightly point out is so critical, has everything to
do with student motivation, which is, today, almost a subject that is just not mentioned in this conversation.
That we're always talking about test scores, and we're always talking about accountability. What about
accountability for curiosity? What about accountability for lifelong learning? When are we going to factor
those into the metrics of education?
>>: Quick question. I have is, we're inside a technology company. We see it played out all the time.
Students are highly motivated to use technology, bring technology in the classroom. There's no
pedagogical approach for using technology.
The next student goes on to college, attends the first lecture. They go back to the dorm and never go to
class again.
>> Tony Wagner: Right.
>>: So what is your response to this technology gap that exists between K through 12, higher education;
more importantly, lifelong learners not being motivated at all in the education.
>>: I want to add to that. I want to say in some cases they're even pushed away from the technology
because the teachers aren't familiar with it. How many times has the problem been that the teacher is
hands off with the technology or the district says we're not doing that.
>> Tony Wagner: There's always a computer in the corner of the classroom. It's always on. It's almost
always a Mac, and it's never working, I don't understand it. [laughter] No, these are great questions, and
there's -- did you want to add to this question?
>>: There was one thing that occurs to me is that maybe pedagogy isn't the right thing, is that maybe what
we're trying to do is formalize a way of thinking and learning today based on a framework that existed
yesterday. And the framework might just not be adaptable enough to accommodate the brain and the
learning style and the method and learning style of today.
>> Tony Wagner: These are wonderful questions and comments. And I'm still learning a lot about
application of technology to 21st century learners, so I can't pretend to be an expert on this. But let me
observe. Rigor has been classically defined as acquiring more and more complex information.
The more you know, the more rigorous your curriculum has been. Are you smarter than a fifth grader?
Can you win at trivial pursuit? That's classical rigor. Rigor in the 21st century is not what you know,
because that changes all the time. It's what you can do with what you know in the 21st century. It's
competencies more than content coverage. Yes, you need content. We can talk about that.
But my point is that teachers are still teaching the old way of rigor. They're purveyors of information. And
kids know that if they want information, they'll go get it when they need it, how they want it, whenever they
want it. 24/7. They don't need a teacher for information. But they do need a coach.
And kids said this over and over again, they want a coach. They want a mentor. They need a coach to
learn to think. They need a coach to learn to write. They need a coach to learn how to question.
You know, when I walk into a classroom, what I'm really listening for is who is asking what kinds of
questions. In the traditional classrooms, the only questions being asked are factual recall questions. The
first kid that has the right answer to the question, it's on to the next. What I want to hear are open-ended
questions or, better still, challenging questions. How do you know that? What's your evidence for that?
>>: You have a working model in San Diego and a couple of others. You mentioned three in the book. Is
that transpondable, that model? And if so, why don't other schools adopt it? What are the obstacles? If
they're getting better test scores and more students going to college, a reasonable person, which I assume
most school administrators and principals and teachers are, they would say, hey, that works, let's do that.
>> Tony Wagner: There's a lot of problems with scale-up or replication. First of all, all three of these
models are replicating themselves. That's one reason I've chosen the three. High Tech High has grown
from one high school to a network of eight schools K-12 with 3,000 kids. So it's replicating.
The Met, another one, is replicated in over 50 cities. There's a number of problems. First of all, all of these
schools are working against the grain in the sense that they're refusing to teach the state test or to offer
APs. That's not a risk most folks are willing to take. Most folks are saying, look, we've got to teach to the
test. I'm in Virginia Beach working with 250 administrators. The superintendent just got up and said we're
committed to teaching 21st skills. The principal calls me over and says, hey, I don't care what that
superintendent says, do you think I'm going to tell my teachers to stop teaching to the test? Hell no.
Pardon my French.
So my point is that we live in a very risk-averse profession in education. It's also a deeply isolated
profession. We don't do R&D. We don't innovate, because isolation is the enemy of innovation. So while
we have some best practices, they're on the periphery. They're outliers. And until we get clear about the
skills that matter most and until we create the tests for the skills that matter most, they're going to continue
to be on the periphery.
The other problem is teacher preparation, which I get into in the book. These schools have a hard time
finding teachers who will do what they expect. Turns out, one of them is starting their own graduate school
of education. They find veteran teachers can't adapt. Young teachers are breaking down the doors to get
in. But they have to train these young teachers on how to do that. And that's a challenge. So many hands
I don't know where to start. Yes, sir, and then here.
>>: Factual question. It's been a long time since I paid attention to college admission.
>> Tony Wagner: Is this a multiple choice question, I'm sorry[laughter].
>> Tony Wagner: Let me read the four answers and I'll give you one.
>>: High Tech High gets into Stanford more than anybody. And I am thinking about Cal and UC system,
which used to give you a point for every AP class.
>> Tony Wagner: It's still a problem, in many cases. Although it's a double-edged sword, because on the
one hand colleges use AP as some indication of rigor. But, on the other hand, they don't offer college
credit in their required courses for AP anymore because they recognize that the courses are really very
superficial, very watered down. They'll give you elective credit. Well whoopy. Instead of being able to take
photography, I just get credit for my AP chemistry course which I hate. Anyway, sir.
>>: I was curious. You started out with some vignettes about [inaudible], especially the chemistry one first.
Do you have any sense for what academic credentials those teachers had? Were they actually degreed in
chemistry?
>> Tony Wagner: Yeah. Went to Harvard, unfortunately. No, I'm kidding. It's interesting. It's not about
academic content preparation or credentials. That's one of the biggest mistakes of this No Child Left
Behind law, assuming that an effective teacher is one who is credentialed; whereas the research points
that, instead, there are exceptions, elementary educators struggle with teaching math unless they learned
math.
>>: When I say credential, talking about state certification. I'm talking about does he have an academic
background in the sciences.
>> Tony Wagner: I understand what you're saying. Do they have content expertise. But the problem in
many cases is not so much the content expertise, it's what this young lady said here, which is do you know
how to engage kids? Do you know how to not deliver information but ask a powerful question?
I've seen some of the best classes, math classes, begin with one question. Or even an entire semester
devoted to a set of essential questions. So frequently your content expertise can sometimes get in the way
because you want to deliver the answers as opposed to letting students find the answers to the questions
that you've posed.
>>: Well, learning is not just confined to school. Do you have any practical tips as parents, you know, how
we can teach them these skills outside the school environment?
>> Tony Wagner: I'm going to let you answer this question.
>>: You can home school. That's what we do. And you were going through your list of things at the
beginning, essential skills. I was thinking most of those are just there naturally. And it's just a matter of
giving time and space for kids to do that, to ask questions and be critical thinkers, to be creative and come
up with solutions. And in the school situation, there's not time or space for that.
If you're home, or whatever, wherever you are, you allow time and space and maybe tools for that to
happen. It's there and the joy is there, too.
>> Tony Wagner: I agree. But you don't have to home school your kids to accomplish that. It's about the
conversations at the dinner table. It's about where you go on a Saturday to a museum or whatever. I
mean, sadly, many people have mastered these skills either through extracurricular activities or through the
ways their parents have engaged them and the kinds of learning opportunities parents have created. Many
people are learning these skills in spite of school, not because of school. Yes, please.
>>: How much of this do we ultimately attribute to downstream, we being industry. Every job application at
Microsoft, ESCS [phonetic], few say MBA. Are we still simply adding to the problem by saying there is this
one tract to get here. Remember our founder had no degree.
>> Tony Wagner: I heard he dropped out of that community college in Boston. I can't remember the name
of it. Yeah. I did hear that.
It's a great question. Because we're a credentialed society. And frequently we're using credentials as
some form of a cut score. If I'm not mistaken, when you decide to hire somebody, it's not on the basis of
their resume. How many interviews do you do per applicant? 12, something like that?
>>: On average five.
>> Tony Wagner: Five. I'm way off. But my point is, I've sometimes asked business leaders: How do you
hire people? Do you hire people on the basis of multiple choice tests? Would you do that? Of course not.
Why should we assess kids in a way that's radically different than the way you will assess job applicants or
people who are candidates for promotion. So I do agree with you, credentialing is an issue. But what I
understand, at least the better companies, is the credentials may get you in the door, but that's not what
gets you the job. It's the skills, it's the competencies.
>>: I had a question about the employers doing the hiring. Yourself and the others who made the
decisions and suggestions about what things need to change, et cetera, et cetera, isn't this entire group of
people under discussion colored by the same lens, gone through the same education system? Maybe they
missed the mark by a couple of yards, short of the mark somehow?
>> Tony Wagner: Say the last part again, [laughter].
>>: A couple of yards short of the mark.
>> Tony Wagner: I was in a meeting recently, where a group was trying to plan a business education
discussion about how to work together. And the founding chairman of Boston Scientific, John Able, he was
listening intently. He asked a question similar to this. He said: You know you've made a list of all the
people who should come to this meeting. In effect, he didn't use this term, but he said they are all the usual
suspects, they're all people who have done well by the system. What is going to be the incentive for them
to question the system?
And I'll be candid with you, I was not a good student, that's why I became a teacher. I felt there had to be a
better way. So I think it's a problem. I think it's a concern, that you've got the inmates running the asylum.
[laughter]. Yes, please.
>>: The one thing that you haven't brought in here is the most atrocious thing, government, and how it
affects the educational system.
I'm wondering what your thoughts are on the government's role and necessary role in education. The
founding fathers, education by the states and it was usually reciprocal to small cities at the time. Now
we've got this huge education part of it coming down from the top telling us what we're supposed to do. Is
it better to be decentralized? I hope you say or can you ->> Tony Wagner: Sounds like this is a yes/no kind of question, doesn't it? [laughter].
>>: I don't want open-ended.
>> Tony Wagner: It's a great question. And it's not a simple question to answer. It appears that we have a
monolithic system through No Child Left Behind, which, before we go to anything else, is a double-edged
sword. Finally, we're disaggregating test score data so we know how different subgroups are doing.
Something government did to us that I think was long overdue. That's the good news. The bad news is we
have an accountability system that's completely broken.
Do you know that kids in Mississippi are more literate, more proficient in literacy than the kids in
Minnesota? Did you know that? Of course it's not true. Why do I say that? Because the test scores in
Mississippi are geared in such a way they produce a higher number of, quote, proficient kids. The
standards are not the same.
We're also lying when it comes to the dropout rate in this country. State of Florida has a little formula for
determining dropouts. I go just a few months ago to the state that won the award, the district that won the
award for the best district in the state of Florida with a 90 percent graduation rate.
I go to Education Week's website, which is using a uniform well researched formula find out the real
graduation rate is 68 percent. They're lying. Over and over and over again, the variance between what
states report as the graduation rate and the real graduation rate is 15, 20 points or more. So let me turn it
back to you. What's the role of government to solve the problems, the two problems I just pointed out?
>>: I'm a libertarian, so I would say decentralize it, premarket ->>: We have 50 different states with 50 different standards for what constitutes a high school graduation
rate, what constitutes proficiency and literacy in math. We already are decentralized, 50 different states.
>>: With a national amount of education looking over telling them No Child Left Behind, we'll give you
funding based on it, would I teach the tests? I have a family of educators, my brothers are educators, I
don't know why.
>> Tony Wagner: I shouldn't take that personally, should I?
>>: They're not geared for it. But they tell me horror stories about No Child Left Behind. I'm from Rockford
School District. You might have heard of it because we had a really bad [inaudible].
>> Tony Wagner: I was in Rockford once.
>>: [inaudible] and they just tell horror stories about it. And the people that have the best education that I
experienced when I was in graduate school and I was in college, were people that went to places that were
not public schools. I went to public school, but I went to a special program for the arts inside of public
school, which you could argue was outside the system because it was a project by the whole segregation
crap that was going on.
And what I want to hear you say, and don't say it's not true, is that a lot of little experiments in education is
better than having some form or factor you fill out for how education is to be done.
>> Tony Wagner: I agree. But here's the dilemma. I assume you have a product spec, you have to deliver
a product, right, that has a clear set of standards. But how you deliver it, you or your team creates that
product, figures this product out, is up to your ingenuity and creativity. In other words, you're tight on the
outcome but loose on how you get there.
That's what I think we have to be in education. We have to be very clear about the 21st century skills that
matter most and, then, within that context, do a lot of innovation and R&D for figuring out different ways to
get there. Different schools and different teachers and different kids are going to do it differently. And, in
fact, there is no one best way. But we have to be clear on the outcome.
>>: So related to that very topic, you seem to be very familiar with the school district. Are you familiar with
the strike we had and are you familiar with the curriculum?
>> Tony Wagner: Right.
>>: Any thoughts on that or opinions in that case, or have you ever seen that approach of the standardized
curriculum work anywhere?
>> Tony Wagner: You know, back when I was in graduate school, we had these debates about whether or
not there was such a thing as a teacher-proof curriculum.
I have not, first of all, disqualifier, I've not visited schools in Bellevue. So I can't speak with real authority.
But it's a related answer to what I just gave. I think you have to be very clear about the outcomes. You
have to be very clear about what high school graduates need to know and be able to do and backwards
map that to eighth grade and fifth grade. And how you get there.
Finland, highest scoring country in the world in terms of its students. Started out 25 years ago as
essentially a timber country. That's all they did was chop down trees. Now as you well know, Nokia, Sunto
[phonetic] et cetera.
How did they get there? They transformed teaching from an assembly line job, page 67 by October 3rd, to
a knowledge worker job.
And they transformed the experience of teaching from being one of isolation to being one of teams,
continuously trying to figure out better ways to meet the very few high standards set by the state. I believe
that's a better answer than others I've seen and heard of. Goodness gracious, would you all please take a
number. I don't know what to do here. Yes, please.
>>: You're alluding to some of this, but I'm reflecting that there is a good amount of consensus around the
21st century skills or different commissions and groups and educators at my level, but what are the barriers
that need to be removed for that to be enacted, or what are some levers that we can pull to [inaudible] this
scale?
>> Tony Wagner: Barriers. First of all, people think you can add 21st skills onto existing content. I think
that's a serious mistake. You have to rethink content.
In Hawaii, Rand Corporation did a study of how many hours it would take a fifth grade teacher to cover all
of the content standards in that state. The answer came back: 3,000 percent of the teacher's time. And
now you're going to add 21st century skills. I don't think we're going to get there from here.
So that's barrier one. Really, it demands rethinking. Content used to be the target. And in every single
state we have content standards and way too many. What we need are performance standards.
Quick, how many know what a gerund is? Raise your hands. Sorry, too late. How about an infinitive, raise
your hands? No sorry. You get a point. Who knows what a participle is? Oh, my goodness, you go to the
start of the class. Everybody else fails. Very steep bell curve. Those are content standards. I used to
teach parts of speech. I used to do sentence diagramming. Heaven forbid. The performance standard is:
Can you write an effective essay. Now the 21st century which matters most? You can Google the
definition of a gerund if you need to.
>>: [inaudible].
>> Tony Wagner: Pardon?
>>: [inaudible].
>> Tony Wagner: Excuse me. Did I say the G word? I have to go. I hear my car calling me. Aren't we
due someplace? Yes, please.
>>: I was trying to listen upstairs at the desk. I was losing about every eighth word. So forgive me if you
covered all of this. But the problem is not just K through 12, it's the faculty while they're [inaudible], we all
have Ph.D.s in something, so that makes us an expert in our one thing don't we hope. We are not taught to
teach. [inaudible] Ph.D. in education. And even that didn't have a lot of the pedagogical aspects of it.
When you get somebody in a specialized area such as computer science or whatever, they have no
pedagogical training, and so [inaudible] habits go all the way through. And by the time they graduate they
come to work here and they're a part of it. Don't you know how to think critically, don't you know how to
[inaudible].
>> Tony Wagner: We're not training educators properly. Even when we think we're giving them a set of, a
course in pedagogy, it's really a broken thing, because, in fact, preparing educators ought to be like the
medical model where you spend extended time with a senior resident and you really learn by observing
and learn through experience and we're not doing that in classes. Yes, please.
>>: I would say, present company excepted, parents are also a large part of the problem, or society.
Because we do give some teachers pedagogy classes. We ask them to take them, then we tell them you
must teach this in that way and we're not leaving it up to them to -- we're restricting them too much.
>> Tony Wagner: Well, you're right, the debates are: Should we teach whole language or phonics. And I
think that's the wrong debate. The debate is, has to be a performance standard. What constitutes
proficiency in literacy in the 21st century for fifth graders going on to middle school. Then lets educators
figure out different ways to reach that performance standard.
>>: So I don't want to give a story about the positions [inaudible] but I can't help it.
>>: [Inaudible].
>>: So can you talk about -- no, I just say, what motivates the teacher to actually change?
>> Tony Wagner: What motivates teachers to change.
>>: What I want to get into, I'm talking about financial motivation. I'm talking about competition, not being
stuck in a union. Because there are teachers with vocation, which we do these things without being asked
for. And the rest are people which are good people but they don't like have the internal calling or whatever
that may be.
So I can give you the answer to that, I think everybody thinks the same things. But some things that need
to be brought up.
>> Tony Wagner: I think it's not as simple as you might think. It's not about money, number one. Ranks
fourth on the list of what educators say they want, by the way. Finland doesn't pay their teachers any more
than our teachers are paid in this country.
>>: [Inaudible].
>> Tony Wagner: As do most educators here, thanks to unions. Number two, it's not even entirely about
tenure, especially for younger teachers. Young teachers don't particularly care about tenure. It's all about
working conditions. Let me illustrate that with a metaphor. Imagine for a moment you're an amateur
athlete or amateur performing artist. Many in this room are probably one or both. But in this imaginary role
you want to get better.
So you go to the Yellow pages. Say it's tennis. There are no tennis camps. There are no tennis coaches.
Or say it's guitar, no music schools. You turn on TV, can't see tennis played well. Have no idea what good
tennis looks like. No idea what wonderful guitar sounds like. All you can do is attend a couple of lectures a
year on the theory of the sport or the theory of the instrument and then go sit in a room alone for 20 years
practicing all day every day all by yourself.
How good are you going to get? What's your incentive to improve? You're not getting any feedback.
That's the education profession so-called today.
>>: I would just question that about it's not about money, because if you're asking people who are
teachers, they've already accepted that they're not going to get paid well. What about the people who
would have been teachers if there was actual pay involved?
>> Tony Wagner: Yeah, there's something to that. But I think status is more important than money.
Unfortunately, in this country they're synonymous. The more money you have, the more status you have.
But in point in fact, part of what they've done in Finland is make education, make teaching a very
prestigious profession. Only one out of every 10 students who apply to schools of ed get in. I think that
would be true here. If education were viewed with more of a sense of respect instead of cynicism or
distrust, I think many, many more people might be willing to consider making some sacrifices.
And I think they should be paid more highly, both. They should have a 12-month work calendar, for
starters, with appropriate increases in salary.
>>: Change the pay scale for attorneys and teachers. [laughter].
>>: Just a quick comment on that. You were talking about how does technology integrate with teaching.
David shared with me some innovative teacher videos, and they were saying use of technology actually
enhanced their professional status with parents and with the community. It's such an interesting
intersection. So if we can improve the competence and the use of ICT with teachers, that in turn helps
raise status and helps give them a better image in the community.
>> Tony Wagner: It does. I see you one and raise you one. What I'd love to see some folks in Microsoft
do is create web content that helps us get clearer pictures of what good teaching looks like by grade level
and content area. What does it look like to teach critical thinking. And I want a product that, first of all, I
can click on the video and I can see it by content area and grade level. Then I can download it off the CD
or off the Internet samples of student work and the rubrics that were used to grade that work.
And then I can double click again and look at a meeting of teachers working to talk about how to get better.
I want to know what a good adult meeting looks like where educators are problem solving and figuring out.
That's the disruptive technology we truly need for education. We need to make teaching and adults
working collaboratively transparent.
>>: The thing I struggle with is this one guy once taught me something that I've never seen proven: You
are what you measure. The successfully outcomes for an outstanding teacher may not be what they're
measured on.
>> Tony Wagner: That's right. That's the problem. That's what I'm saying.
>>: You marry that with cognitive dissonance, which is the fact when I went to school, gosh darn it, I
learned this way. And I expect people who achieve my standard of performance in the work world, I want
to hire them that way. When I start a university, I expect students to have this achievement because I have
it. The end game is never transformed to create a good mid-game. And so does that dissonance means
that I'm not likely, hopefully if I'm not thinking clearly, to hire somebody who may have a transcendent set of
skills, but because they didn't pass the filter, they don't get in the game.
>> Tony Wagner: Right. And I don't have an answer for that, except that I would imagine you could say
more: Show me. Show me your products. Show me what you've done. Show me your work. And that
that's what we need to do at the high school level. Show me your work. Get up. Stand and deliver. Show
me your research paper. Stand up and defend it. Show me the products you've created.
>>: It seems to me that it would be wonderful to see that a conference of principals of, let's say, K-12
school district or something like, that where that was the conversation, as opposed to show me the amount
of times your teachers managed to pass students through a system that was defined as such. Right? So it
seems to me that it needs to come from within that machine where they are starting to applaud and
celebrate.
>>: I think it's both internal and external. I think the public has to demand a different kind of accountability.
I don't want to see a test score. I want to see a student essay. I want to see a student oral presentation. I
want to see what the employer, where that student did his work internship, has to say about that student.
Those are the assessments that matter more than the test score. Please.
>>: I used to be a secondary history teacher. So getting down to brass tacks and you had your way or set
up a school, what would outcomes look like for a 10th grade world history course? What would they be
measured against? How would you design this?
>> Tony Wagner: First of all, I'm not a social studies teacher. It would be easier for me to answer that in
the context of English, which I did teach. You want me to answer that in terms of English? All right. I was
a senior English teacher when I last taught.
And I said to students, over the course of this year, this is not an introduction to Brit lit. This is not a survey
course. We're not using a textbook. You're going to get better at four or five things. You're going to
master some core competencies. I had them down on one sheet of paper. You're going to learn how to do
research. You're going to learn how to work in a team to put on a productive critical discussion about a
work of literature. You're going to learn how to write effective essays in all kinds of journal entries from
restaurant reviews, to responding to literature. You're going to also learn to write personally, narratively,
persuasively, expressively, those are the four core competencies you're going to have nine months from
now.
Now, we're going to read about half as many novels as the class next door. But what and how we read
them and discuss them is going to be completely different. Oh, by the way, your midterm exam is as
follows: I'm going to give you a new short story in the midterm exam. I'm going to watch and observe as
you discuss that. And then I'm going to have each one of you write an essay about the short story. And
I'm going to grade you on both your discussion and your paper.
Oh, by the way, there's only three grades. A, B or incomplete. B is my minimum level of competency. A is
for excellence. Incomplete is you're not there yet. And I don't care how long it takes you to write that
paper, how many times you have to do it. You don't get the B until it meets my standard. Does that
answer your question?
>>: You run into objective, subjective criticism with parents? I know I ran into that a lot.
>> Tony Wagner: This is the external benchmarking question. Are those -- how do I as one English
teacher, 12th grade teacher, know my students' papers are good enough? Do they meet an external
standard? And that's where teams of teachers have to work together to benchmark their students' work to
the expectations of the employer and of colleges. And you can do that now. You can download. This is
another great Microsoft product I can see coming down the pikes, the ability to really look at samples of
freshmen college work and the assignments that are a consequence of the work.
Yes, please.
>>: One of the basic assumptions of this conversation is that the goal is all these goals are set by the
employer. So the assumption is that the ultimate goal is to get a job with one of these big employers.
So how many young kids have you talked to who say that that's their goal? Or who feel that that's what's
going to be important to them in the future?
>> Tony Wagner: That's a wonderful question, because what I came to understand about how this
generation is differently motivated, they want to do something meaningful. They want to make a
contribution. And money is very secondary. They really want to have responsibility, challenge,
opportunities to learn, grow, be mentored and to create. And they're not going to wait 10 years in a work
world to get it.
If they don't get it, they're going to go someplace else. I think it's a very important question, because it has
profound implications for how we motivate not only in the school but in the workplace.
Kim says I can only take two more questions, so I'll have a bidding war, who would like to pay me the most
to answer that question. Yes, please.
>>: I would like to get a perspective on, is there a stage in the K through 12 cycle where the fall-off occurs?
Are we doing okay at grade school level?
>> Tony Wagner: Grades K through 4 are okay. Reading scores have improved in elementary. And, in
part, because we're very clear about the skills that you need by the end of elementary school. Now literacy
is not well taught. Kids learn to read, but they don't read to learn. But, still, at some level we're doing a
better job at elementary. Scores level off in middle school and drop in high school. And it's really more of a
6-12 problem than it is a K-6 problem. But it's only relative.
Last question.
>>: Interesting analogy [inaudible] running the system. Do you think that people want their children to
follow the system or question the system? And you said that we should question the system, but is that
what people really want?
>> Tony Wagner: That's a wonderful question. You know, as I wonder about to what extent the skills for
work are the same as the skills needed in citizenship, it's very clear that employers want young people to
think critically about how to improve their product.
But when the employees start questioning the product, is that going to be a problem? Definitely Ford wants
employees to think about how to build a better SUV, at least they did a few years ago. But what if
employees start asking should we be building SUVs at all?
Is it an accident that Toyota has the highest return on investment? In other words, biggest profit, highest
employee involvement, and the most hybrid cars? Is it? I don't know.
Folks, you've been absolutely wonderful as an audience. I've been delightfully challenged. Thank you
very, very much for coming.
[Applause]