I've actually seen the new courses & materials that EF has produced and they are pretty good. What i doubt is whether EF really have the business structure and teachers available to deliver these lofty ideals in the classroom on a consistant basis.
I don't have any knowledge of how EF is set up in Russia but here in China it's only the big cities (i believe it's Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou & Shenzhen but i may be wrong) that are actually run by the Shanghai Head Office all the other schools are franchises. From my own observations the franchise schools are generally run by people with little or no experience in the education sector. They are also staffed by teachers who generally have the bare minimum qualifications to work in China i.e. a degree (who doesn't have one of those these days!) and a 'teaching certificate' (that could be a 20hr TEFL on ESL which is not worth the paper it's printed on!). For a mulitude of reasons, i've also noticed that teachers at these schools don't tend to stay in their postion for very long. Therefore it puts pay to any idea that teachers can really become part of the decision making process with students, helping them set and acheive goals because these are medium to long term considerations which need to be worked through for years not months. You can produce fancy courses, talk about cutting edge methodologies, etc., etc. but when it comes to having the teachers and management to carry it out, EF and most other private schools in areas such as China, Russia, Indonesia & certain parts of East Europe (where there is a market for these kind of businesses) just don't have them.
It's certainly interesting that EF are looking to push these kind of ideas because i feel that most other private schools are looking to go the other way e.g. they realise that if your staff is made up of teachers with generally little or no experience then the last thing you want is them making decisions. Instead these other schools push "teachers" towards scripted lessons with which there should be little or no deviation.

EF have a long way to go to realise any ambitions they have about being the vanguard of how to teach in the 21st century.