New Report: Measuring Skills for the 21st Century

Posted by on January 26, 2009

Measuring Skills for the 21st Century: Education Sector

Leaders in government, business, and higher education are calling for today’s students to show a mastery of broader and more sophisticated skills like evaluating and analyzing information and thinking creatively about how to solve real-world problems. But standing in the way of incorporating such skills into teaching and learning are widespread concerns about whether or not they can be measured. In Measuring Skills for the 21st Century, Senior Policy Analyst Elena Silva argues that they can indeed be measured accurately and can serve as common metrics of student achievement. Silva examines a number of new assessment models that do this and that demonstrate the potential to measure complex thinking skills at the same time that we measure a student’s mastery of basic skills and knowledge. These emergent models, she concludes, are critical to meeting our educational goals—to ensure that teachers and students can monitor and improve the learning process—and our accountability goals—to ensure that schools are giving all students what they need to succeed.

http://www.educationsector.org/research/research_show.htm?doc_id=716323