As federal regulations and state regulations continue to emphasize student outcomes as measures of school district effectiveness, district administrators increasingly need to identify and eliminate barriers to student postsecondary success.
Specifically, district administrators seek key student success milestones (i.e., performance indicators) throughout grades K-12 that indicate whether a student is on track to reach college and career success. Districts can then track whether students achieve these milestones and develop targeted initiatives to reach students who fall behind.
Academic and career milestones
Across K-12 institutions, priority milestones focus on early-grade reading performance, middle-grade math performance, and success in advanced coursework. Milestone initiatives focus predominantly on academic milestones, but some initiatives incorporate student engagement metrics, co-curricular activity participation, and/or community service.
The Redefining Ready initiative from the School Superintendents Association attempts to add structure to high school success indicators by organizing them into three categories: college-ready, career-ready, and life-ready. Initiative researchers also developed specific readiness stipulations for each category.
Social-emotional learning milestones
Student success milestones can also incorporate social-emotional learning (SEL) skills. CASEL identifies five core SEL competencies that aim to define the various skills associated with strong SEL performance: self-awareness, self-management, social-awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. CASEL also breaks these competencies down into specific subskills. For example, self-management includes impulse control, stress management, self-discipline, self-motivation, goal setting, and organizational skills. CASEL has not yet endorsed an assessment to assess the development of these competencies in each grade-level.
Critical thinking and creativity milestones
To identify and measure student success milestones associated with critical thinking and creativity, district administrators must first endorse a clear definition of the skills associated with these more nebulous terms. Harvard University’s Explore SEL Project includes a comparison tool that allows educators to compare common “non-academic” frameworks based on the skills that they aim to instill in students. Of the 16 reviewed frameworks, the tool highlights the 21st Century Learning (P21) framework as a framework with a strong focus on critical thinking and cognitive flexibility. The P21 framework contains specific skills related to “Creativity and Innovation” and “Critical Thinking and Problem Solving.”
Critical thinking and creativity components of the P21 framework
Creativity and innovation
- Think creatively
- Work creatively with others
- Implement innovations
Critical thinking and problem solving
- Reason effectively
- Use systems thinking
- Make judgements and decisions
- Solve problems
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