ABSTRACT
Over 20 years ago, a report called A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform warned that US students were not being challenged to use higher-order thinking skills (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983). Not much has changed. With the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, schools have shifted their curricula to emphasize more rote memorization as a means to prepare for standardized tests (Ellis, 2007). This has reduced the amount of meaningful learning taking place in schools (Kohn, 2000; Ravitch, 2011). Now the nation is at greater risk because students are entering the workforce ill-prepared.
