Measuring K-12 Students’ Soft Skills

Copious research finds student soft skills development predicts future career and academic outcomes. Administrators who wish to develop nonacademic, soft skills for students must find a way to measure student performance on nonacademic skills and target interventions accordingly. This report highlights publicly available, time efficient, researched-back assessments of four key soft skills: cultural empathy, teamwork and collaboration, communication, and environmental stewardship.

In a 2016 Gallup and Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) national poll only about 10 percent of teachers stated that their schools or school districts measure students’ soft skills “very well.”