Check out this article about a study from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's most recent release from its study on "Measures of Effective Teaching."  The article entitled The Challenge of Teaching Higher-Order Skills explores the implications of the findings of this study, and also has a link to the complete report.  The findings "would appear to highlight some fairly consistent weaknesses in instruction and raise big question marks for teacher and leadership preparation—especially since the common-core state standards call for teachers to help students master precisely these kinds of higher-order reasoning and analytical skills."  They are also highly relevant to our work in aligning instructional practices to the National Board Standards.