21st+Century+Skills

===The current situation === Wagner (2008) argues that the passing of No Child Left Behind, while well-intentioned, is having a tremendously negative effect on how well students are prepared when they leave high school and enter college or the workforce. Teachers are expected to teach students massive amounts of content that will be on standardized tests, which affects school funding and even property values (p. 12). Due to the large amounts of standardized testing that students are required to take, teachers focus on teaching to the test and do not have the time to teach students the skills necessary to survive in the 21st century. Content is still important, but it should not be the only thing that we are teaching our students.

What needs to change
Our group agrees that the “Seven Survival Skills” put forth by Wagner (2008) are essential for survival not only because they are required to be successful in the workplace, but because they are required to prepare engaged and effective citizens in a 21st century global world. Wagner's list of skills correspond to what other forward-thinking organizations are promoting [see **figure 1** for a comparison to the “Seven Survival Skills”]. If we can teach students to think and communicate effectively, we will not only prepare them to do well on standardized tests, but also to be creative and innovative thinkers in our workforce and society.

Support
In 2007, the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) put out an executive summary of their research which stated, “Strong skills in English, mathematics, technology, and science, as well as literature, history, and the arts will be essential for many; beyond this, candidates will have to be comfortable with ideas and abstractions, good at both analysis and synthesis, creative and innovative, self-disciplined and well organized, able to learn very quickly and work well as a member of a team and have the flexibility to adapt quickly to frequent changes in the labor market as the shifts in the economy become ever faster and more dramatic.” (p. 6) Wagner (2008) suggests skills very similar to these. Content knowledge is still necessary, however, in our our changing world, high school and college graduates will need to be fluent in the “Seven Survival Skills” to compete for American jobs.

The effects of NCLB on the education landscape are far-reaching. Cohen-Vogel, who focuses on the politics of reform, argues there are “unprecedented demands for achievement” (p. 484), and public school districts are reacting. School administrators in Florida are staffing to the test. “Principals describe hiring, developing, and removing teachers in an effort to increase their schools’ overall FCAT performance, and they report paying particular attention to student test scores in their decisions to reassign teachers within their schools”. (p. 491) If these high-stakes tests are not measuring what is most needful for a child’s education in the 21st Century, then all of this serves as an obstacle to better learning. In contrast, Wagner (2008) suggests that by focusing on the seven survival skills, student success is a by-product, not an end in itself. Certain schools - such as High Tech High - achieve above average results even though they "refuse to teach to these tests" (p. 207).

Suzanne Harper and Michael Todd Edwards (2011), two mathematics education professors at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, demonstrate a teaching strategy that focuses on the cultivation of several of the survivor skills outlined by Wagner (2008). The strategy coincides with the skill of adaptability: teachers take a traditional “cookbook lesson”, one that leads students through a series of procedural steps in a recipe-like fashion, and transform it into an inquiry-based investigation. By teaching the content within the bounds of inquiry and peer-to-peer discussion, students develop a) knowledge within a meaningful context;b) a student-led solution technique; c) opportunities to revise and critique their own work, as well as that of others; d) presentations and the skills required to share knowledge with an audience. (Harper & Edwards, 2011)

Finally, these skills are not only needed in the high-tech industry, but in businesses throughout the market world. Mark Maddox, a human resources manager at Unilever Foods North America tells Wagner (2008) “we need self-directed people…who can find creative solutions to some very tough, challenging problems.” (p. 32) Michael Jung, a Senior Consultant at McKinsey and Company, shares that the definition of work is no longer that “employees have to do whatever the employer wants…but actually, you would like him to come up with an interpretation that you like—he’s adding something personal—a creative element.”(p. 40)