The Global Achievement Gap

Tuesday, 29 September 2009 14:57

Looking for a good book this fall? I’d suggest Tony Wagner’s The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach The New Survival Skills Our Children Need. It is one of the most important books on education and American schools at the moment, and that is why PDS teachers and leaders read it over the summer.

Dr. Tony Wagner is the Co-Director of the Change Leadership Group (CLG) at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His worked has been funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which recognizes the need to re-engineer schools and the difficulty that schools have in making changes.

What is unique about The Global Achievement Gap that interests me as a parent and as an educational leader is that Wagner and his team interviewed scores of business leaders who hire our students and children after years and years of education. Wagner asked the executives about what skills young graduates need to be meaningful contributors in the new world of work. 

From his conversations with business leaders, Wagner develops and discusses Seven Survival Skills that are needed by our young people.  He then visited and studied hundreds of classes at many of our nation’s most respected elementary, middle and high schools. He found a gap—a large one—between what businesses say they need and what our “best” schools are producing. He also discusses a second gap: one between what American graduates’ skills are and what they will need to compete in the global knowledge economy.

Here are the Seven Survival Skills that Tony Wagner identified, as well as some of the thoughts of the leaders he talked to:

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

Companies need thinkers and problem-solvers at all positions in the company, especially the front lines. Ellen Kumata, consultant to Fortune 200 companies, says, “The idea that a company’s senior leaders have all the answers and can solve problems by themselves has gone completely by the wayside…The person who is close to the work has to have strong analytic skills. You have to be rigorous: test your assumptions, don’t take things at face value, don’t go in with preconceived ideas that you’re trying to prove.”

Collaboration Across Networks and Leading by Influence

Companies need people who can communicate with their co-workers from around the globe. The 21st century associate must understand and respect differences—cultural, racial, religious, and ethnic. They will be called to lead by influence and by example, not from positional authority. Mark Chandler, Senior Vice President and General Counsel at Cisco, offers, “The biggest problem we have in the company as a whole is finding people capable of exerting leadership across the board…Our mantra is that you lead by influence, rather than authority.”

Agility and Adaptability

Our children will know and live with so much more continuous change than we could ever imagine. They must be flexible and able to learn as they go along and willing to work where they are needed. Clay Parker, President of Chemical Management Division of BOC Edwards, explains, “I’ve been here four years, and we’ve done fundamental reorganization every year because of changes in the business…I can guarantee the job I hire someone to do will change or may not exist in the future, so this is why adaptability and learning skills are more important than technical skills.”

Initiative and Entrepreneurship

Individuals will need to set and meet goals for themselves. They will need to be creative and to look at things differently. They must be willing to grow and have stretch goals, to take risks, and to work to improve themselves, keeping their thinking ability fresh and renewed. Mark Maddox, Human Resources Manager at Unilever Foods North America, expresses, “For our production and crafts staff, the hourly workers, we need self-directed people…who can find creative solutions to some very tough, challenging problems.”

Effective Oral and Written Communication

The number one complaint of senior executives was the quality of writing of their young employees.  Executives suggested that their writing showed a lack of thinking and a predilection to write to a formula to satisfy a set requirement. They suggested that young people, despite being well-educated, don’t know how to write persuasively and with voice. Annmarie Neal, Vice President for Talent Management at Cisco Systems, says, “The biggest skill people are missing is the ability to communicate: both written and oral presentations. It’s a huge problem for us.”

Accessing and Analyzing Information

Today, the amount of information available to any of us is increasing exponentially at a very fast pace. Competent workers must be able to discern what is important and reliable as opposed to trivial or not useful. Mike Summers, Vice President for Global Talent Management at Dell, explains, “There is so much information available that it is almost too much, and if people aren’t prepared to process the information effectively, it almost freezes them in their steps.”

Curiosity and Imagination

In our economy where price competition can be so fierce, those products that reflect creativity and playfulness are more valued. Creativity and playfulness become a huge price differentiators, and companies rely on all employees to be contributors. 
Michael Jung, Senior Consultant at McKinsey and Company, tells Wagner that, “Our old idea is that work is defined by employers and 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.”

In The Global Achievement Gap, Wagner urges educators, school leaders, policymakers, and parents to become urgently interested in a different, more process-oriented education system that prepares thinkers who will be competent in the fast-paced global economy. He concludes that our schools are not focusing enough on helping children develop these thinking skills but instead are continuing a system of education that was designed to prepare children for competence in the industrial age.

He suggests that our education system is too focused on what he calls “answer-itis” where knowing the right answer is more rewarded than using critical analysis to explore the many questions and considerations that might formulate a problem. Wagner seriously asserts, based on his research, that we as a nation need to need to re-think, re-imagine, and re-conceptualize what is a necessary education for the 21st century.

I encourage parents to read The Global Achievement Gap because it helps each of us become more attuned to the important long-term goals for our boys, which includes success in their careers.  While still difficult, we tend to imagine our young boys in middle school or high school, but these are but intermediate goals. Hearing heads of companies talk about their new employees who have been in school for many years offers us a chance to connect schooling today to jobs of tomorrow. At PDS, we share Tony Wagner’s perspective and urgent belief that schools must re-design themselves so that we are indeed giving children today the skills and knowledge that prepare them to thrive as citizens and leaders in the dynamic and interconnected global community of tomorrow.

Written by :

Lee Burns