Seven skills students desperately need

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

By Meris Stansbury, Assistant Editor

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.

For more by Tony Wagner, go to: http://www.schoolchange.org/

Tony Wagner has served as Co-Director of the Change Leadership Group (CLG) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education since its inception in 2000. An initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CLG is an "R & D" center that helps teams to be effective change leaders in schools and districts. He is also on the faculty of the Executive Leadership Program for Educators, a joint initiative of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, Business School, and Kennedy School of Government. Tony consults widely to public and independent schools, districts, and foundations around the country and internationally and has been Senior Advisor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for the past eight years.

Tony has worked for more than thirty-five years in the field of school improvement, and he is a frequent keynote speaker and widely published author on education and society. Prior to assuming his current position at Harvard, Tony was a high school teacher for twelve years; a school principal; a university professor in teacher education; co-founder and first executive director of Educators for Social Responsibility; project director for the Public Agenda Foundation in New York; and President and CEO of the Institute for Responsive Education. He earned his a Masters of Arts in Teaching and Doctorate in Education at Harvard University.

Tony’s publications include numerous articles in both education journals and national magazines and four books. Tony's latest book, The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach The New Survival Skills Our Children Need—And What We Can do About It has just published by Basic Books. Change Leadership: A Practical Guide to Transforming Our Schools, written in collaboration with Robert Kegan and colleagues of the Change Leadership Group, was published by Jossey-Bass last year. Routledge publishes Tony’s two other books: the highly acclaimed Making the Grade: Reinventing America’s Schools and How Schools Change: Lessons from Three Communities Revisited.