I must be dreaming.
More and more, research shows young people need the same cognitive and social-emotional skills to complete school and progress in the workplace, and, moreover, that those skills can be taught and tested like any other subject in school.Nope. Not dreaming.
Most schools do not teach or measure nonacademic readiness indicators directly, though they do pop up through conduct reports, attendance, team-project evaluations, and other areas. However, several groups are developing more-comprehensive assessments they hope will help school administrators predict a student’s academic and social-emotional readiness trajectory.
Education Sector, a Washington think tank, has been studying something other than the "common core." Seems social-emotional learning plays a role in college and career readiness. Research "shows the biggest predictor of success is a student’s conscientiousness, as measured by such traits as dependability, perseverance through tasks, and work ethic. Agreeableness, including teamwork, and emotional stability were the next-best predictors of college achievement, followed by variations on extroversion and openness to new experiences," according to the article.
This research is a potential blow to education "deformers," the likes of which see Race to the Top as the second-coming, and as such is likely to get little mainstream press for now. However, education advocates would do well to read between the lines and get ready to stand with their educators. It's a fissure in the attack on teachers and may well indicate that academic assessment and the movement to tie teacher evaluations to them is seriously flawed. (Though many of us already know that.)
Yes, Virginia, there is something more to education than the DCAS. Your success is as dependent on your HQ teacher as it is on YOU.
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