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The Partnership Releases State Implementation Guides to Help Integrate Skills into Content Print
Guides Focus on Standards, Assessments, Curriculum and Instruction, Professional Development and Learning Environments

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD — October 30, 2009 — The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) released the State Implementation Guides – which offer best practices on building standards, assessments, curriculum and instruction, professional development and learning environments – to help integrate skills (such as critical thinking, problem solving and communication) more purposefully into core academic subjects (such as mathematics, reading, science, history and others). The Partnership released the guides at ASCD’s Fall Conference on Teaching and Learning after receiving extensive feedback from practitioners, policy-makers, academics, business and community leaders and others throughout the year, including during the P21 Cyber and National Summits in June, 2009. 

“As the Partnership’s strategic council chair, I hope to encourage more states to join the 21st century learning movement to ensure our next generation of leaders are prepared for and inspired to achieve careers in innovative, inventive areas that might not even exist today,” said Kathy Hurley, senior vice president of strategic partnerships for the education services and technology company Pearson and P21 executive board and strategic council chair. “With these new guides, P21 provides support for educators nationwide who are integrating skills like critical thinking and problem solving into their education frameworks. Knowing the critical role teachers and administrators play in preparing our youth for tomorrow’s challenges, the guides include professional development opportunities in addition to curriculum, assessment and instructional suggestions.”

The guides demonstrate that no skills implementation can be successful without developing core academic subject knowledge and understanding among all students – students who can think critically and communicate effectively must build on a base of core academic subject knowledge to be successful in today’s world. In addition, it is important to note that the support systems discussed in the guides are not merely ends, but means to a greater goal.

"Many of today's educators are clamoring for resources that help them better learn how to teach and assess 21st century skills," said Ken Kay, president of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. “Without quality professional development, the best standards, assessments, curricula and learning environments will not have much of an impact on student achievement. That is not to say that this is easily done. Robust professional development must focus on lesson plans geared to high cognitive demands and the potential difficulties in using student-centered methods such as project-based learning.”

Standards
Standards drive the curricula that schools follow, the materials students are exposed to and the tests they take, according to the Standards Guide. In addition, standards establish the levels of performance that students, teachers and schools are expected to meet. Against the backdrop of the common core standards initiative (CCSI), which stresses career and college readiness, the Standards Implementation Guide offers helpful guidance for all states that are considering revisions to their core academic content standards.

The guide recommends:
  • Create standards that are an inch-wide and mile-deep by communicating essential understandings or habits of mind for each subject area, rather than focusing on a list of facts;
  • Integrate 21st century skills into core subject standards and consider the emerging examples set by New Jersey, North Carolina, Wisconsin and West Virginia; and
  • Make standards observable, measurable, and aligned with key 21st century skills such as critical thinking and problem solving.

Assessments
Today’s K-12 assessments predominantly measure memorization of discrete facts, not the ability to apply that knowledge across disciplines, notes the Assessment Guide. To provide a rigorous education, accountability systems must be improved to measure whether students have deep knowledge of core academic subjects and the ability to think critically, problem solve and effectively communicate information about that knowledge. It is inherently important, but also difficult to create tests that demonstrate which teaching efforts result in better knowledge and skill acquisition. The guide offers several recommendations to states to help build rigorous assessments, including:

  • Incorporate a broader use of performance-based measures that focus on higher order thinking;
  • Measure skills alongside content; and
  • Build skills into formative assessment strategies by providing teachers with rubrics, checklists and professional development, as has been done in the Catalina Foothills School District (Tucson, Ariz.), the Metropolitan District of Lawrence Township (Ind.) and the New Technology High School models.

Curriculum and Instruction
According to the Curriculum and Instruction Guide, student mastery of core academic subjects and skills should be recognized as two critical outcomes of teaching and learning. Consequently, curriculum and instruction strategies must be designed to enhance content and skill acquisition. The guide notes that educators cannot teach skills devoid of content nor can educators effectively teach core academic subjects without teaching skills.

The guide recommends states:

  • Develop curricula that is designed to produce deep understanding of core academic subjects and authentic application of 21st century skills;
  • Implement “Teach for Understanding” principles to help develop and deliver lessons and units that connect essential concepts and skills; and
  • Create meaningful, real-world, opportunities for students to demonstrate content and skill mastery – for example, North Carolina’s pilot genetic counseling course.

Professional Development
The Professional Development guide notes that all professional development efforts should exist as part of an aligned system of teaching and learning that includes standards, curriculum, instruction and assessments. To build successful professional development initiatives, focused on integrating skills into content, states should:

  • Develop intensive teacher professional development programs that focus on enhancing skills and knowledge acquisition in the teaching of core subjects, for example Iowa’s Authentic Intellectual Work and the New Literacies Collaborative at the Friday Institute (Raleigh, N.C.); and
  • Build capacity by working with educators to create an environment of differentiated professional learning, risk taking and collaborative relationships, as evidenced by ASCD’s Teacher Leader Capacity-Building Model.

Learning Environments
Typically, learning environments are thought of as physical spaces, notes the Learning Environments Guide. However, the Guide suggests learning environments be viewed as the support systems that organize the condition in which humans learn best, i.e., learning environments should accommodate the needs of each student and support the development of the whole child, ensuring their academic as well as their emotional, social, and physical development.

To best design environments that promote student achievement, the Guide recommends states:

  • Move toward more flexible units of time that enable project-based work and away from the “seat time” approach to gauging student progress – for example, Rhode Island and New Hampshire have placed an emphasis on real-world learning and demonstration of mastery by sacrificing the traditional Carnegie Unit; and
  • Empower the “people network” by moving teachers from isolation to connection and providing educators with the means to refine their knowledge and skills in collaborative and supportive environments.

A full set of recommendations are available at www.21stcenturyskills.org or on P21’s tools and resources page.

About the Partnership for 21st Century Skills: The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is the leading advocacy organization focused on infusing 21st century skills into education. The organization brings together the business community, education leaders, and policy-makers to define a powerful vision for 21st century education to ensure every child’s success as citizens and workers in the 21st century. The Partnership encourages schools, districts, and states to advocate for the infusion of 21st century skills into education and provides tools and resources to help facilitate and drive change.

21st Century Skills Leadership States include: Arizona, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin and West Virginia.

Member organizations include: Adobe Systems, Inc., American Association of School Librarians, Apple, ASCD, Blackboard, Inc., Cable in the Classroom, Cisco Systems, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Dell, Inc., Education Networks of America, Educational Testing Service, EF Education, Gale, Cengage Learning, Hewlett Packard, Intel Corporation, JA Worldwide®, K12, KnowledgeWorks Foundation, Learning Point Associates, LEGO Group, Lenovo, McGraw Hill, Measured Progress, Microsoft Corporation, National Education Association, Nellie Mae Education Foundation, netTrekker, Oracle Education Foundation, Pearson, Quarasan!, Scholastic Education, Sesame Workshop, Sun Microsystems, Verizon, and The Walt Disney Company.

Organizations or states interested in joining the Partnership may contact info@21stcenturyskills.org.

Contact: Albert Lang (202) 585-0243 (w); (202) 207-8510 (c); alang@eluminategroup.com

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