I'm amazed at the short-sightedness apparent in this article and in some of the comments here. Yes, the American public education system is broken and is to a large extent too focused on poorly-constructed standardized testing, but imagining that 1) the system used to be better for students, 2) the resources exist for universal project-based learning/assessment, and 3) project-based learning/assessment would fix many/most of the problems ignores the reality of the education system as a whole.

The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

From the article, the question provided is about technical reading comprehension; it has nothing to do with learning how to use a microscope. The text states, "To avoid crushing the glass slide when focusing, begin with the lens close to the specimen...". The question is NOT testing your knowledge of how to use a microscope, it's testing whether you can read an instruction manual, which is actually an important skill that can be difficult to assess through project-based learning. Standardized tests try to package the assessment of a wide range of fundamental skills into a relatively contained, standardized format so that skills are evaluated relative to some clear standard as opposed to each individual teacher's ability to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each of their students. Secondly, the article states that "Schools seem to have forgotten that students learn best when they are engaged; in fact, the biggest problem in schools is boredom." Tell me about a time when the biggest problem in schools was not boredom (or worse). This statement attempts to recall a mythical golden age of education excellence that can be recaptured if only schools could "remember". This is not a memory problem. Public education has become a much more complex beast over the past few decades, and the system is struggling to adapt, not remember how to teach.

There are over a million high school teachers in the US. How many of them could competently replace their core curriculum with project-based learning? What about the ones with 40 students in a classroom? What if half of those students don't have basic English language skills? What if 2-3 of those students have behavior problems and regularly destroy the projects of others?

This is just a tiny sample of the challenges that educators and education researchers are trying to address, and the "make robots" solution only addresses a few problems with the current system while introducing many others. Importantly, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of such initiatives across the country to introduce more hands-on learning. Education research is not only identifying the most effective interactive, project-based teaching methods, but actually working with schools to implement them effectively. This is a long-term, resource-intensive, ongoing development in education, and it will take awhile to get it right. Trust me, the benefits of project-based learning identified by this article are old news in a lot of progressive education research, but the actual implementation is a far more complex problem, and one that requires understanding the useful role of standardized testing as well as its disadvantages.