One key individual is Bob Wise who is the President of Alliance for Excellent Education http://www.all4ed.org/ and former Governor of West Virginia. I was able to have a personal conversation with him about what he meant when he stated that we needed to have higher standards. Bob made the reference that our athletes are competing and winning on a global level in the Olympics because they are preparing to compete under the highest standards and then prepare appropriately. However, in our education system we rank low in how we prepare our young people to compete in science and other industries of the 21st Century. I asked if he would agree that the conversation should shift to be not around standards, but around competencies that are demanded in today's workforce. In addition, I made the reference that our education system today because it hasn't resolved the issue of higher standards, but is trying to measure competencies is forcing our teachers to teach to the test which is more about test taking competencies then about real world competencies needed to compete in a global economy such as critical thinking, information discrimination, communication, teamwork, and abstract thinking.
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