A recent employer survey sponsored by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills found that the skills new job entrants most need for success in the workplace--oral and written communication, time management, critical thinking, problem solving, personal accountability, and the ability to work effectively with others--are the areas in which recent high school and college graduates are least well-prepared. The authors blame this problem on schools' emphasis on core content proficiency at the expense of applied skills. They advocate authentic assessment as a way to redirect high school instruction toward a more balanced approach. Widespread use of authentic instruction and assessment, they believe, has been stifled by the dominance of the Carnegie unit as the method of awarding high school credit. They describe three pockets of innovation--the MET School in Providence, Rhode Island; Federal Hocking High School in Steward, Ohio; and the New Hampshire Department of Education--that have found ways to work around the Carnegie unit system to implement more authentic assessment.