Tony Wagner, codirector of the Change Leadership Group at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, has written several books on how to "transform" America's public schools, based on visits to schools and talks with educators and employers. In Making the Grade: Reinventing America's Schools (2001), he set up Central Park East High School in Manhattan as one model of what we should aim for to make sure that students are taught the critical "competencies" they need for the 21st century.

In The Global Achievement Gap, he heavily promotes seven sets of so-called 21st-century skills that he claims are not being taught in our schools, and must be. But the basic flaw in Wagner's thinking is his assumption that achievement gaps, global or national, are due to a lack of skills (or competencies), not to a deficient knowledge base that governs their development and use.

The seven sets of "survival" skills he is selling are also being pushed by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, an advocacy group supported by prominent high tech companies, the National Educational Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, and other business or educational organizations with no recent record of interest in strengthening the academic content of the school curriculum.