Despite seventeen years of education reform and first-in-the-nation performance on standardized tests, including NAEP and ACT, too many Massachusetts high school graduates are still not prepared for work or post-secondary education. “21^st Century Skills” are being hailed as “new” focus areas in our students’ curricula by the Commonwealth’s current administration,. But a look  our soon-to-be-replaced curriculum frameworks demonstrates that the identified skills are already embedded in the state’s academic standards and guiding principles—they just haven’t been addressed effectively in a widespread manner. These standards should be the basis, not of 21^st century skills, but of what the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills calls 21^st century rigor, a term that they prefer to describe the higher threshold of teaching content and skills together.