English and math still matter, said Patrick O鈥橠onnell, CEO of the foundation that supports the charter school north of Oakland, California. But having the ability to reason, research and adapt will be crucial as technologies like artificial intelligence change all aspects of life and the workplace.

鈥淚f students can really progress in these skills, they’re almost like launch pad skills,鈥� he said.

But there was a big challenge: How do you go about teaching them? How do you even define these so-called 鈥渟oft鈥� or 鈥渄urable鈥� skills? While most people have an intuitive sense of what skills like creativity and collaboration are, few have ever broken them down into clear components schools can use to teach students and test whether students have learned them.

Until now.

Several companies and non-profits are taking these skills that have been fuzzy concepts and working on giving them shape and definition. They鈥檙e gathering teachers, developers of tests, business leaders and other experts to break down these skills into smaller skills and then into even smaller subskills and nuances that can serve as steps toward mastery. Communications, for instance, could include negotiating and public speaking as subskills.

The resulting outlines of skills and subskills are like a tree branching out from its trunk into smaller and smaller limbs, all with an eye to making them as teachable and testable as math or English.

鈥淭here’s no system of capturing (these skills) and measuring them, because, frankly, we haven’t valued them as at the same level that we have academic skills,鈥� said Laura Slover, managing director of Skills for the Future, a leader in trying to define and test soft skills.

鈥淎s the world is changing, so must we,鈥� Slover said. 鈥淲e’re trying to make what is invisible visible鈥ow do we flip the discussion about college applications and getting jobs, from how someone looks on paper to showing evidence of what they’re capable of?鈥�  

Efforts to flesh out these long-undefined skills come as researchers, including, theand, most recently, the XQ Institute, a nonprofit that promotes soft skills, have increasingly highlighted their importance in the changing economy.

XQ earlier this year listed developing measurements of soft skills one of its 10 keys to adapting high school education for the future. 

The effort is still in its early stages. Skills For The Future released its 鈥� earlier this year, so lesson plans and tests of soft skills are still being developed. But Making Waves was able last school year to use to plan lessons on communication and of how students can take criticism constructively.

With communication, for example, O鈥橠onnell said teachers focus on public speaking 鈥� one of 10 different aspects of communication Pathsmith identified 鈥� then on having students prepare an 鈥渆levator speech鈥� 鈥� a quick pitch of themselves or a project they can give in just a few seconds.

鈥淲e gave students a template of components in an elevator pitch,鈥� O鈥橠onnell said. 鈥淭hen we also had a lesson on how a strong elevator pitch is both what you say and how you say it. (That) includes things like eye contact and pacing and verbal intonation.鈥� 

Tim Taylor, president of America Succeeds, a nonprofit that鈥檚 one of the major partners in Pathsmith, said he hopes the breakdowns of 10 skills the organization released in 2024 will help other companies develop ways to teach these skills as well as test them so employers can have some certainty a student has mastered them. Those skills include leadership, fortitude, character and mindfulness, as well as the three that Skills For The Future has tackled.

鈥淲ith the advent of AI, when everybody has the same AI, then the things that really differentiate you are these durable skills,鈥� Taylor said. 鈥淚t’s your critical thinking, collaboration, growth mindset.鈥� 

鈥淚’m old enough that I developed a lot of these skills by being feral and running around my neighborhood and having my peers tell me I was being a jerk,鈥� Taylor added. 鈥淚 think that the current generation is spending more time on their phones and less time really interacting face to face, and they’re not developing these skills in the same way. But employers still demand them in order to get and keep a job.鈥�

The OECD has tried to start on a test given in many countries, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) the last several years. The OECD hopes to branch out into others. 

An online assessment known as the has tried to gauge student skills of analysis, inference, evaluation, induction, and deduction for several years, even being used by some universities to verify whether students were learning well.

Skills For the Future, a partnership between six states, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Educational Testing Service, the company best known for running the SAT and GRE exams, already has prototypes of tests for high school students on collaboration, communication and critical thinking undergoing trials in a few schools in partnering states. 

The backbone of those tests are the detailed 鈥渟kills progressions鈥� released earlier this year outlining the three skills by breaking them down into three or four major subskills, then multiple 鈥渋ndicators鈥� within each subskill. 

It also shows how a student can progress in stages, not with A-F grades, but instead using 鈥渆xploring鈥� a skill at the start, to 鈥渁nalyzing; 鈥渋ntegrating鈥� it into their work and then 鈥渆xtending鈥� use of it. 

Communication, for example, is broken down into four subskills:

• Different communication modes, such as written vs verbal
• Adapting communication styles to different audiences
• Listening to others for deeper meaning
• Understanding and adapting to different emotional or ethical dynamics of an interaction

Critical thinking also has four major components: How students seek information, analyze it, form arguments and then reason with logic.

The breakdowns then go deeper into each skill. About half the evaluation of communication, for example, focuses on how well a student conveys a message. Beginners should recognize that communication should differ for different goals, such as whether to explain, inform, persuade, or entertain. At higher levels, a student should know how to tailor communication to the goal, as well as consider the needs of different audiences and respond to cues from an audience about how well the message is received.

The other half of the communication subskills, though, focus on how well a student is hearing and understanding communication from others. That might include pausing before responding to be sure others have expressed themselves fully, adapting to cultural differences of others, asking questions to clarify what someone said or picking up on messages that may be implied but not clearly stated.

鈥淐an you express the same idea in different ways?鈥� asked ETS researcher Teresa Ober. 鈥淚 think it’s maybe the easiest (subskill) to grasp, but it can also be kind of the most challenging to convey, right? Maybe you explain something one way and a person doesn’t quite understand it, Can you explain it in a slightly different way.鈥�

鈥淚t鈥檚 also really important to be able to use visuals very effectively, right?鈥� Ober added. 鈥淲e’re often used to giving presentations with PowerPoint slides and so forth. So, how can you take an idea and just present it as succinctly as possible?鈥�

Similarly, critical thinking covers component skills such as fact-checking, using multiple sources of information, using evidence over opinion in reaching conclusions, using deductive reasoning and recognizing and avoiding logical fallacies,

Ober said that because the skills progressions are designed for tests and to guide teachers in rating students, many of the indicators are behaviors a teacher can observe a student doing, or not doing. She compared them to the 鈥淚 can鈥� statements teachers use as goals for lessons 鈥� can a student say 鈥淚 can鈥� perform a skill.

鈥淭he indicators are still pretty general, but they allow us to get that much closer to observable behaviors,鈥� Ober said. 鈥淏ecause we are a measurement organization, we are really focused on things that we can observe, right, that provide evidence of a particular construct, a particular competency.鈥�

Skills for the Future hopes to have new assessments of collaboration, communication and critical thinking that include exams but also ways of allowing students to demonstrate mastery with projects or presentations available for schools to try out by fall.

It鈥檚 also looking at adaptations for colleges.

While Skills For The Future has built its frameworks with schools as its starting point, Pathsmith focuses on business needs first. Formed from America Succeeds, a Denver-based non-profit, and the Lightcast research and consulting company, formerly known as Emsi Burning Glass, it developed outlines of 10 skills by searching 80 million job advertisements for traits companies seek the most. The CompTIA digital training and certification company also joined the partnership.

鈥淲e define durable skills as how you use what you know, then how you show up in the world,鈥� Taylor added. 鈥淭he goal is to be able to signal to employees what you know, what you can do related to these skills, at what level.鈥�

Similar to Skills for the Future, Pathsmith breaks each skill into subskills 鈥� between four and eight for each of the 10 鈥� and also spells out how skills develop over time through four performance levels 鈥� emerging, developing, applying, succeeding. 

With communication, for example, Pathsmith divides it into eight subskills or contexts that each require different approaches. These include written vs. verbal, negotiations, customer service, on social media and public speaking.

Insuring someone has skills in all these areas matters to different businesses, said Jason Tyszko, senior vice president at the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation, which uses some of the breakdown in its youth training programs.

Financial services companies, he noted, will care if someone can send clear, concise and polite notes to customers and write internal reports properly.

鈥淣ow, if I’m on a manufacturing floor, what I need to know is, when there’s a safety condition that is about to go wrong, how are you communicating effectively, loudly and as clearly as possible to prevent an injury on the job?鈥� Tyszko said. 鈥淎nd how are you making sure that you are reinforcing in a clear and consistent manner safety protocols to avoid injury or to avoid the line going down.鈥�

Pathsmith doesn鈥檛 have tests of the skills in the pipeline yet, though it hopes vendors will step forward to develop some, so that students can prove to employers they have a skill in a way employers will trust.

鈥淲e don’t want to say who can build it and who can’t,鈥� Taylor said. 鈥淲e just want to make sure that the market has an opportunity to start with a really quality back end, and they don’t have to start from scratch.鈥�

Whether universities and companies buy into the tests and treat the ratings as real credentials for college admissions and hiring will be key to whether either Pathsmith or Skills To The Future frameworks succeed..

鈥淚 would say, let them compete and see which one ends up getting more adoption than the other,鈥� said the Chamber of Commerce鈥檚 Tyszko. 鈥淏ut there’s room for both, as far as I’m concerned.鈥�

Join 社区黑料 and the Progressive Policy Institute at 1 p.m. ET Thursday for a webinar about the 鈥渟kills landscape鈥� and how education and AI could help unlock new avenues for equity, mobility and opportunity. 

PPI鈥檚 Bruno Manno will first lead a conversation with Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute, about the potential for AI to accelerate the pace of change and what this means for students and workers. 

Kerry McKittrick, co-director of the Harvard Project on the Workforce, will then moderate a panel with Judy Goldstein, senior vice president of American Student Assistance, and Carlo Salerno of the Burning Glass Institute.

Sign up for the Zoom or tune in to this page Thursday at 1 p.m. ET to stream the event.

More AI coverage from 社区黑料: 

• AI Education Is the New Space Race. Here鈥檚 How America Must Respond

• OpenAI鈥檚 Education Leader on AI鈥檚 鈥楳assive Productivity Boost鈥� for Schools, Teachers

• AI-Fueled Testing, From the Mouths of Babes

• Artificial Intelligence and Schools: When Tech Makers and Educators Collaborate, AI Doesn鈥檛 Have to be Scary

• Leanlab Founder Says Ed Tech Should Root Itself in Community Voice, Co-Design

The new year brought changes to requirements for New Jersey teachers, including a new law eliminating a basic skills test that lawmakers overwhelmingly advanced in both houses.

Gov. Phil Murphy signed the  eliminating the Praxis basic skills test for people seeking teaching certifications in June, and it went into effect Jan. 1. Lawmakers said the legislation aimed to address a l and remove duplicative, costly tests that create barriers to pursuing a career in education.

At the time, it faced little controversy. Just three Republicans voted against it.

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But recent comments from tech mogul Elon Musk have shined a spotlight on the new law. Musk, who owns social media platform X, this week  of an article about the change and questioned if teachers in New Jersey need to 鈥渒now how to read.鈥� The post has been viewed nearly 20 million times.

Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia (R-Sussex), who supported the bill, said the change to teacher certification requirements has been taken entirely out of context and does not lower the bar for would-be teachers.

鈥淢y largest concern was it was an extra expense for teachers just starting out, and for taking a test, actually, that is much easier than the current tests you already have to take,鈥� said Fantasia, who obtained her teaching certificate in 2008 and now works as an administrator at a charter school.

She explained that for teachers to receive certification in New Jersey, they must first graduate from an accredited teacher preparation program with at least a 3.0 grade point average, complete months of student teaching, and pass several exams, depending on the grade level and subject matter being taught.

Those tests can easily amount to hundreds of dollars, and by the time a potential teacher takes the Praxis exam, they鈥檝e already proved their capabilities, she said.

States across the country have removed similar exams in an effort to ease shortages plaguing schools, according to the . Oklahoma enacted a law in 2022 removing the requirement for a general education exam, and Arizona implemented a law allowing educators to begin teaching before graduating from college.

Fantasia did not fault Musk for his confusion about the law and placed some blame on the media 鈥� fringe and mainstream 鈥� for irresponsible headlines and missing context. The knee-jerk reaction from the public is to be 鈥渃ompletely expected,鈥� she said.

And while she noted she鈥檚 the loudest Republican voice supporting the legislation, she slammed Democrats for remaining 鈥渞adio silent鈥� on a bill they supported. The bill sponsors did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

鈥淭he teachers of New Jersey are made to look across this country like the village idiots because the Democrat Party who sponsored this bill and the governor who signed it don鈥檛 feel it necessary to defend them when the headlines are extraordinarily misleading,鈥� Fantasia said.

Murphy鈥檚 office defended the law in a statement to the New Jersey Monitor.

鈥淭he Praxis Core requirement was redundant to New Jersey鈥檚 other requirements for teacher certification that remain in place, and its removal was a recommendation of our public school staff shortage task force, a group of experts who know more about New Jersey鈥檚 education needs than Elon Musk,鈥� said Natalie Hamilton, a Murphy spokeswoman. 鈥淭he bipartisan legislation that the Governor signed passed by overwhelming margins and we are disappointed by out-of-state agitators that want more red tape.鈥�

Steven Baker, spokesman for teachers union the New Jersey Education Association, said 鈥渞ight-wing blog sites trying to push this story don鈥檛 understand the law and definitely do not understand New Jersey鈥檚 very rigorous teacher certification standards.鈥�

He stressed that the additional requirement to pass the Praxis following years of other coursework did nothing to elevate the standards and 鈥渁mounted to a corporate money grab鈥� from college students.

Sen. Joe Pennacchio (R-Morris), who voted against the bill, said he thinks it has indeed lowered standards.

鈥淚 think these are the days of dumbing down, and somebody鈥檚 got to put their foot down and say, 鈥楢bsolutely not,鈥欌�� he said. 鈥淲e should expect more from these kids, not less, and we certainly should expect no less from the teachers that are teaching them.鈥�

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Jersey Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Terrence T. McDonald for questions: info@newjerseymonitor.com.

The hope of the 鈥淪kills for the Future鈥� collaboration is to make it easy for schools to treat so-called 鈥渄urable鈥� skills such as critical thinking, teamwork and perseverance the same as traditional subjects like math and English. That includes giving students new tests and a new report card that shows how well they have mastered those other skills as they apply to colleges or jobs.

The collaboration between the Educational Testing Service and Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching started last year and added five states this spring 鈥� Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. The Mastery Transcript Consortium which has already built a mastery-based report card became part of ETS, the company that runs the SAT and GRE college admissions tests, in May.

The partnership comes as some businesses edge toward skills-based hiring, rather than hiring for having a college degree. The partners also want to increase mastery or competency learning, where students progress at their own speed, rather than in lockstep with a class.

鈥淭his whole idea that education could be focused on durable and transferable skills is super exciting to me,鈥� said Scott Looney, founder of the Mastery Transcript Consortium, which just added its innovative report card to the partnership this month. 鈥淚t’ll make school more engaging, interesting for kids, but also make it more meaningful.鈥�

鈥淚 think this is going to give us the ability to take this to millions of kids,鈥� he said.

Carnegie President Tim Knowles said this new effort is a full reversal of what his foundation once promoted. In the early 1900s, the foundation popularized the credit hour or Carnegie Unit concept of measuring learning by hours spent on a subject. 

But Knowles said it is clear now that students learn at different speeds and the measure that share鈥檚 his foundation鈥檚 name doesn鈥檛 work anymore. ETS, Carnegie and others in the mastery movement want students to be rated on progress toward each skill, at whatever speed works for them, regardless of when a grading period ends.

Knowles said he hopes to replace the credit hours model 鈥渨here bells ring between classes, where it’s time, not competency, that is the rule of the day.鈥�

鈥淥ur aim is to build a new architecture that would actually enable competency-based learning to move from the edges of the profession where it’s lived for 100 years to the mainstream,鈥� he said.

The end result, said Laura Slover, managing director of the effort, will hopefully be a way to show students鈥� character traits that many believe are just as important to success in school, jobs and life as academic knowledge.

鈥淲e are convinced that there’s a lack of social and economic mobility in the U.S., and that we’ve moved from a knowledge economy to a skills economy,鈥� said Slover. 鈥淲e want a portable transcripts or wallet, if you will, that shows where students are in their development, skills and abilities that they can use with employers, they can use to open the doors to college, and that are fair and reliable and meaningful for kids.鈥� 

That shift, though, relies on schools to determine which skills to focus on and how to measure them. While there are many tests on subjects like English and math, there are no standard ways of measuring skills like communication, collaboration or digital literacy that carry across teachers, subjects, schools or states.

This spring, the five states that are dipping their toes into mastery joined Skills for The Future to help develop ways of measuring student progress on these durable skills. 

ETS said first steps included looking at the 鈥淧ortrait of a Graduate鈥� or 鈥淧ortrait of a Learner鈥� statements that 鈥� see Nevada鈥檚 or North Carolina鈥檚   鈥� that list the attributes and values they want students to have. The most common traits that will be the first  priority, said Knowles, are communication, collaboration, persistence, and digital literacy, with critical thinking and creative thinking close behind.

ETS, Carnegie and the states met in California in April to brainstorm approaches, with each state now meeting with teachers, students, colleges and businesses to develop ideas to pilot as early as January, 2025. A few early possibilities include interactive testing that adjusts questions – making them harder or easier or zeroing in on certain topics – based on student answers, as some online tests do now.

Some tests could be game-based, instead of just having students answer questions.

The partners are discussing how to use artificial intelligence and portfolios of student work such as papers, artwork, and projects created for multiple classes, as well as extracurricular or out of school activities to show character and interdisciplinary skills.

Portfolios can post a challenge for schools and for one of the long-range goals of the project – that skills can be reliably measured and believable to business or college admissions departments. Mastery schools use portfolios now, but those are dependent on subjective decisions by schools and teachers and are not verifiable to outsiders.

But Nevada state superintendent Jhone Ebert said Skills For The Future could develop guidelines that could be used in schools everywhere to create more consistency. 

Or some rating decisions may be left to teachers, but a third party may be able to offer a seal to be added to the new transcripts to offer some verification.

Ebert said she wanted Nevada schools, some of which have tested mastery concepts after a 2017 state law change, to have a role in creating new assessments.

鈥淲hat has not gone well in the past is that someone just makes it a determination that this is the magic wand and how we’re going to measure everything,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hen it comes down and classroom teachers haven’t been involved, state leaders haven’t been involved. It is just this tool that has been made available and we are all going to adopt.鈥�

鈥淭his process is much different,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e are all working together to co-design what it will look like and provide that feedback and input up front.鈥�

The Mastery Transcript Consortium started in 2017 with private schools who wanted to show student progress from 鈥渄eveloping鈥� skills to 鈥渕astering鈥� them. It built a transcript model that typically shows about 60 skills, as each school determines, instead of just the half dozen courses a student might take each semester. Some schools have used versions of it in college applications since 2019.

It now has 370 private and public schools or districts as members and says 500 colleges agree to accept students using the transcript.

It also has already built an intermediate report on student progress on durable skills that schools can use as a supplement to traditional academic report cards, if they鈥檙e not ready to make a full leap yet.

Though it keeps adding members, director Mike Flanagan said it is still a small group without the clout to take its work to a massive scale.

鈥淔or us to reach millions of students across the entire country on our own would have taken an infinite amount of time,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 virtually impossible. But ETS is one of the few organizations in the sector that has the scale and capacity to credibly help us reach millions of learners.鈥�

Flanagan added that having ETS, Carnegie and five states joining the work  鈥渓ends enormous credibility to our effort.鈥�

Whether this effort is enough to make mastery and measurement of soft skills take hold nationally remains  to be seen. Attempts to use mastery in states like Maine and New Hampshire never fully caught on and are often .

Among the pitfalls, he noted, are federal testing requirements under the Every Student Succeeds Act that don鈥檛 allow flexibility when students must learn some academic skills. And schools and parents could balk at a shift, he said, though Skills For the Future might succeed in doing enough advance work that it would be easier for schools and teachers to adopt.

鈥淚t’s a real challenge to do it well, but it’s good that somebody with the horsepower that ETS and Carnegie (have) are giving it a shot,鈥� said Scott Marion, executive director of the nonprofit National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment. 鈥淟et’s not kid ourselves. If it wasn’t so hard, somebody would have done it.鈥�

This summer, Lodi, California, high schoolers will again head to local wineries to learn the business through a combination of hands-on internships and college classes. The first-of-its-kind initiative is the result of a growing partnership among the district, Delta College, the Lodi Winegrape Commission and the nonprofit San Joaquin A+.聽

社区黑料 recently partnered with the Progressive Policy Institute for an inside look at the “Growing Futures” Initiative and how it aims to promote a more inclusive agriculture industry. 

In the replay below, you鈥檒l hear from experts Stuart Spencer, Executive Director of the Lodi Winegrape Commission, Kai Kung, CEO of San Joaquin A+, Kathy Stonum, Winemaker at Stonum Vineyards and Francesca Stonum, Operations Manager at Stonum Vineyards.

Some of our recent coverage of trends in career preparation:

• How a California Wine Region Is 鈥楪rowing Futures鈥� By Turning Vineyards Into State-of-the-Art Classrooms

• Why Wait to Graduate? Georgia Apprentices Start Training as Sophomores

• How Rhode Island Is Tapping Career & Technical Ed to Help Every Student Succeed

• LISTEN 鈥� Beyond 鈥楥ollege or Bust鈥�: Apprenticeship as a Path to Opportunity

• Who You Know: Social Capital is Key for First-Gen Students鈥� Career Success

Apprenticeships are booming as high schools and private industry recognize the need for training students for roles in the workforce of the future and for offering career pathways that don’t necessarily rely on a bachelor’s degree.

社区黑料 recently partnered with the Progressive Policy Institute on a new installment of the “New Skills for a New Economy” webinar series, which focused on solutions needed to ensure the U.S. education and workforce systems adapt to meet current workforce needs.

In the replay below, you鈥檒l hear from experts, you鈥檒l hear from experts Vanessa Bennett of Jobs for the Future; Lateefah Durant of CityWorks D.C.; Jess Kostelnik, senior policy adviser to Colorado Gov. Jared Polis; and Seth Lentz, executive director of the Workforce Development Board of South Central Wisconsin. Watch the full conversation:

Some of our recent coverage of trends in career preparation:

• Indianapolis High School Carves Time Away from Class for Internships for All
  
• Why Wait to Graduate? Georgia Apprentices Start Training as Sophomores
  
• How Rhode Island Is Tapping Career & Technical Ed to Help Every Student Succeed
  
• LISTEN 鈥� Beyond 鈥楥ollege or Bust鈥�: Apprenticeship as a Path to Opportunity
  
• Who You Know: Social Capital is Key for First-Gen Students鈥� Career Success