In an Education Week commentary published in print on May 23, Shelley Pasnik, Charles Fadel of Cisco, and Margaret Honey discuss how our innovation-based economy requires greater educational emphasis on the application of content knowledge to solving problems, constructing meaning, and developing new ideas. And to support the teaching and learning of such skills, we need more than rigorous standards. We need new set of assessments to measure and promote such learning.

Excerpt from the commentary:
...Our existing assessment system tends to reinforce rote instructional practices emphasizing the drilling of facts likely to be on a test, rather than problem-solving and reasoning strategies difficult to capture in multiple-choice test items.

If we look at the effectiveness of such practices, and benchmark our success against international competitors, the results are not promising...

...Twenty-first century learning is about the process of integrating and using knowledge, not just the acquisition of facts and procedures. Hence, educators need to build assessments for learning, rather than solely of learning.

Read the Commentary at EdWeek.org