Most Likely to Succeed

You live in a world where education holds incredible promise yet delivers uncertain results. Despite record spending and universal belief in schooling’s value, employers, parents, and students all sense that something’s broken. In The Global Achievement Gap and its successors, Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith make a provocative argument: the systems built for the industrial era—schools, colleges, and credentialing structures—no longer fit the demands of the innovation age. They train you to repeat knowledge, not to create it. They certify attendance, not competence.

The book’s central claim is that you’ve mistaken credentials for capability. As families chase test scores and degrees, true learning—curiosity, creativity, collaboration, and civic responsibility—atrophies. The resulting education pipeline filters for compliance rather than mastery, and that has profound economic and democratic consequences.

From Apprenticeship to Standardization

Wagner and Dintersmith trace education’s roots back to apprenticeship, where learning by doing defined competence. You learned from a master craftsman—like Paul Revere under John Coney or Claude Monet apprenticing to Eugène Boudin—until you could demonstrate mastery yourself. The Industrial Revolution and Horace Mann’s importation of the Prussian model reshaped that organic approach. Age-graded classrooms, fixed curricula, and standardized examinations replaced mentorship.

The result was scalable but rigid. Schools became assembly lines optimized for producing compliant workers, not innovators. That legacy—reinforced by the 19th-century Committee of Ten—still dominates your child’s classroom: subjects sliced into silos, learning measured by recall, and success equated with seat time.

The Credential Illusion

Modern education, the authors argue, swapped the apprenticeship’s authenticity for a credentialing arms race. From the SAT’s artificially normal bell curve (the College Board admits it engineered the symmetry for appearance’s sake) to the college ranking system that prizes selectivity over learning, the system amplifies inequity. Families pay for tutoring and private advising, believing, as 94 percent of adults still do, that a degree is critical for success—even though only 11 percent of business leaders think college graduates are well-prepared.

Stories like Jacob’s—an honors finance graduate from the University of Washington who could only find unpaid internships before delivering mail for a talent agency—and Jaime’s—who drowned in student debt despite altruistic ambitions—show how the credential promise falters. A diploma, they conclude, “is too often a very expensive coaster.”

Testing and the Learning Void

Standardized tests distort priorities. The book’s satirical “Bicycle Aptitude Test” shows how absurd it is to gauge competence via trivia about bike parts instead of actual riding skill. Schools optimize for what’s cheap to measure—multiple-choice recall—rather than for what matters: problem-solving and creativity. The Lawrenceville School’s experiment, in which average exam scores dropped from 87 to 58 after summer break, demonstrates how test-driven memorization evaporates quickly. Students “learn” for the test, then forget.

As technology automates routine work and knowledge retrieval, those outdated tests ironically train students to compete with computers instead of learning to use them. Conrad Wolfram calls this “sheer lunacy.”

The College Crisis and Beyond

College, once the great equalizer, has become a bottleneck. Tuition rises faster than inflation, debt burdens destroy freedom, and evidence from Academically Adrift shows little growth in critical thinking or writing skills. Meanwhile, universities reward research prestige more than teaching excellence, and rankings like U.S. News amplify perverse incentives. Students now graduate less capable of problem-solving than their degree suggests.

Employers have noticed. Companies from IBM to Google now hire for demonstrated capability—portfolios, project results—not pedigree. Apprenticeships, bootcamps, and hybrid models (like P-TECH or Northeastern’s co-ops) demonstrate how learning-by-doing revives the link between study and skill.

A New Purpose and Direction

To fix the system, Wagner and Dintersmith propose redefining education’s purpose: help learners discover passions, master critical skills, and develop purpose. Content coverage—what old curricula optimize—matters less than engagement and agency. Drawing on Tony Wagner’s “Seven Survival Skills,” they urge educators to pivot toward critical thinking, collaboration, adaptability, initiative, communication, information analysis, and imagination. Examples like NBA Math Hoops (which teaches math through basketball) and The Future Project’s mentorships at Malcolm X Shabazz High reveal the power of relevance and passion.

These changes are not optional. In an economy where routine jobs vanish and civic discourse collapses under polarization, education must cultivate creativity and civic literacy—the twin pillars of both economic competitiveness and democracy.

Core message

The future belongs to people who can think critically, work collaboratively, and keep learning beyond credentials. To educate for that future, you must reinvent schools as centers of curiosity, not compliance.

You’ve been told that standardized tests ensure fairness and rigor, but the book dismantles that belief. From the SAT to high-stakes state exams, tests reshape schooling far more than policymakers admit. Designed for rank-ordering rather than competence, they divert resources, distort teaching, and cement inequality instead of revealing talent.

Tests Built to Sort, Not Measure Mastery

Carl Brigham and the College Board’s original SAT explicitly forced results into a bell curve “for symmetry.” That manipulation guaranteed every generation would produce winners and losers regardless of actual skill distribution. By anchoring merit to percentile rank, the test created a system more about position than ability. The parallel industry—tutoring, test-prep, accommodations—now costs families billions.

In classrooms, Advanced Placement courses repeat the same distortion. An AP History student races to memorize everything “a mile wide and an inch deep.” Dartmouth’s experiment proved how hollow mastery becomes: even students scoring 5 on AP Psychology failed the university’s own equivalent exam.

How the Testing Economy Reshapes Schools

The more tests we use, the more school becomes test prep. Teachers feel compelled to “teach to the test,” and administrators tie funding and reputations to score boosts. Creativity, experimentation, and civic topics disappear in favor of multiple-choice recall. The result is predictable: students perform well on short-term tasks but quickly forget. The Lawrenceville School’s summer-retest findings—scores crashing from B+ to F—dramatize the learning illusion.

Technology deepens the irony. WolframAlpha can solve problems that AP calculus forbids you to automate. Yet exams still assess manual procedures instead of asking students to model, interpret, and communicate solutions—the actual 21st-century competencies employers value.

A Path Forward

Wagner and Dintersmith argue we should stop grading along a curve and start certifying meaningful competence bands (“In Good Shape,” “Needs Practice,” “Think Different”). Even more vital: shift toward performance-based assessments—portfolios, projects, juried exhibitions—where students prove mastery through work, not test tricks. Denmark’s choice to permit open-Internet national exams is a telling model: assess as people actually think and work.

Until schools and colleges make that shift, you’ll continue to get the perverse outcome of measurable but meaningless achievement—students fluent in regurgitation yet unprepared for innovation or citizenship.

College sits atop the education hierarchy, but the book argues that higher education’s incentive structure misaligns with learning. Students attend expecting transformation and employability; instead, they get escalating costs, stagnant pedagogy, and an obsession with research prestige and rankings. The problem isn’t indifference—it’s a reward system designed for outputs that impress peers, not empower students.

Research First, Teaching Last

Faculty careers hinge on publishing specialized research, not teaching well. Tony Wagner recounts his adviser’s advice: write for just “one or two other scholars in the world.” That culture, validated by tenure committees, shapes undergraduate life. Students encounter lecture-heavy courses and minimal mentorship because faculty survive through publication counts, not transformative instruction. Naomi Schaefer Riley’s data confirms that professors who teach more tend to earn less.

The Rankings Trap

Universities serve two masters: students and the U.S. News & World Report ranking formula. Admissions offices manipulate acceptance rates, inflate SAT averages through “super scoring,” and invest in luxury amenities to raise retention. Few metrics measure actual learning gains. Reed College’s withdrawal from the rankings underscores the potential for reform—but it’s rare courage.

Studies like Academically Adrift reveal the human cost: many graduates exhibit negligible improvements in critical thinking or writing. Only one-third can read a complex text with real comprehension. In short, college confers prestige but not necessarily proficiency.

Reimagining Higher Education

Solutions exist. Wagner and Dintersmith propose replacing seat-time credit with competency certification—digital portfolios, applied projects, and co-op experiences. Northeastern’s cooperative model, P-TECH, and General Assembly’s job-linked bootcamps offer alternative blueprints. Google’s hiring shift—away from transcripts, toward demonstrable ability—signals where the economy already leads.

Ultimately, colleges need transparent, longitudinal assessments of learning—CLA-style tests—or risk collapsing into brand labels detached from meaning. If they can reconnect scholarship with skill-building, however, higher education could again serve as the mentorship engine of progress rather than its credential mill.

If you ask a student why school matters, you often hear: to get into college, to get a job. The book insists that’s far too small. Education’s true purpose, the authors write, is to help students discover passions, develop career and citizenship skills, and feel inspired to make their world better. That’s a mission of engagement, not compliance.

Passion as the Driver of Mastery

Wagner and Dintersmith highlight classrooms that connect learning to intrinsic motivation. Khalil Fuller’s NBA Math Hoops turns basketball stats into applied math; students who loved the game advanced by multiple grade levels in computation. At Malcolm X Shabazz High, Divine Bradley helped student Zaire develop his public speaking talent into a life-changing strength. These examples show that engagement and relevance matter more than rote learning time.

The Seven Skills for the Modern World

Drawing on Wagner’s earlier research, the book lists seven competencies for the innovation era: critical thinking, collaboration, adaptability, initiative, effective communication, information synthesis, and imagination. These are the new ‘three Rs.’ Without them, test scores and GPAs offer little traction in an economy that rewards creative problem-solving.

From Coverage to Creation

Change requires flipping the old pedagogical model. Instead of racing to cover syllabi, teachers design experiences that provoke inquiry. Students should produce, not merely consume: write for real audiences, design experiments, lead projects, and publicly defend outcomes. Schools like High Tech High embody this spirit by replacing final exams with exhibitions and portfolios.

If you judge teaching by engagement and demonstration rather than volume of content, you change everything—from classroom structure to teacher training. The payoff is deeper learning and more purposeful lives, the real antidote to the credential treadmill.

In the current system, the meaning of a diploma or degree is slipping. Employers, parents, and students mistake the document for proof of readiness. Wagner and Dintersmith contend that what society needs are unequivocal demonstrations of skill, not symbolic paper trails. That means replacing time-served diplomas with competency-based certifications and portfolios.

Defining Mastery Clearly

The authors point to the New York Performance Standards Consortium’s graduation model: each student completes long-term essays, research papers, science experiments, and applied math projects. These aren’t standardized checkboxes but authentic evidence of mastery. In New Hampshire, policy has shifted toward competency-based diplomas replacing obsolete Carnegie Units.

Portfolios as Proof

Digital tools—Pathbrite, Seesaw—allow students to curate essays, videos, and projects that reveal growth over time. External audits (by employers, teachers, or college faculty) verify credibility. Denmark’s open-Internet national exams illustrate a crucial principle: measure knowledge in the context in which it’s actually used. Testing under artificial isolation tells you less about capability than authentic, resource-rich performance.

Teacher and Policy Shifts

Implementing genuine competency systems demands teacher retraining in evaluation, more collaborative scoring, and community transparency. When students must publicly defend their projects, they learn accountability alongside skill. That redefinition—proving what you can do rather than proving you passed—transforms school into apprenticeship again, aligning education with professional and civic life.

Every other major sector—medicine, defense, technology—spends heavily on R&D. Education doesn’t. The authors show how woefully underfunded educational research remains: the federal ratio of defense R&D to education R&D stands around 200-to-1. Without sustained experimentation, teaching methods stagnate. If we want schooling to evolve, we must treat it like the complex system it is: worthy of structured inquiry and investment.

Investing in Innovation

Wagner and Dintersmith envision a SEMATECH-style consortium for education—a partnership among universities, government, and philanthropies that rapidly prototypes and scales learning innovations. Current federal “innovation” programs too often reward standardized test improvements rather than genuine instructional breakthroughs. A diversified research agenda could instead explore adaptive assessments, game-based learning, or teacher apprenticeship models that already work but remain isolated.

Teacher Preparation as Craft

The book praises Finland’s system, where every teacher holds a master’s degree, completes extensive teaching apprenticeships, and has professional autonomy. U.S. teacher prep, by contrast, focuses on credits and compliance. The authors recommend portfolio-based licensure that includes videotaped lessons, student work samples, and reflective analysis—tools already common in National Board Certification but not scaled up.

Elevating teachers as adaptive, design-oriented professionals rather than curriculum deliverers connects directly to the book’s thesis: you can’t build creative students in a system that treats teachers like assembly-line workers. When teachers experiment and iterate, learning becomes an R&D process—exactly what the innovation age demands.