Would You Know a "Skill Standard" If You Saw One?
And If You Did, So What?

A Forum — October 7, 1994

Title V of the Goals 2000: Educate America Act lays the foundation for a revolutionary change in America's system of education and training: Skill Standards.

For decades the American education system has been based on the accumulation of credit hours and diplomas --  without any uniform definition of what academic and applied competencies should be required to earn them. The movement toward skills standards is an attempt to change that -- to identify a set of commonly recognized essential skills and then to develop broadly accepted assessments to measure their attainment.

Skill standards, to be promulgated on a non-compulsory basis by a National Skill Standards Board, will aim to create a common language for employers, educators, trainers, and current and future workers. Once in place, skill standards should enable students and entry-level workers to determine the skill levels they'll need to achieve their goals in the workforce; trainers to determine the skills would-be workers require to qualify for varied jobs; and current workers to identify the skills needed for advancement and to obtain certification when they master those skills. Many observers hope that skill standards will be fulcrums for positive change in American schools -- providing long overdue focus and relevance to high school curricula.

Given this promise, the concept of skill standards enjoys broad support. Yet as Forum moderator Joan Wills, Directer of of the Center for Workforce Development and the Institute for Educational Leadership, explained, skill standards face an immense implementation challenge.

"The law presumes that we ll be able to do what we ve never been able to do before: bring together players to develop agreement on what skills are needed and then set up a system" to measure them, said Wills. "We'll have to build a new type of infrastructure," Wills said, and overcome the "tower of Babel" communication problem that has long plagued the relationship between educators and employers.

In this second Forum on skill standards implementation, Wills was joined by three panelists: Gordon Cawelti, Executive Director of the Alliance for Curriculum Reform and primary author of a new study on restructuring in American high schools; James F. McKenney, Director of the Office of Economic Development at the American Association of Community Colleges and formerly a community college administrator; and Harry Drier, Executive Secretary of the National Consortium of State Career Guidance Supervisors and a veteran scholar on career guidance issues.

Skill Standards and Curriculum Reform in American High Schools

Will American public schools embrace skill standards and adopt them as a centerpiece or key element of their mission? "Well, maybe," said Gordon Cawelti pessimistically.

Cawelti recently completed a major study on high school restructuring based on a nationwide survey of high school principals. The survey, which yielded responses from 3,400 principals, produced a sobering picture of current school reform efforts: only 25 percent of principals responding to the survey said their schools are working seriously on restructuring. "Public schools tend to be sluggish institutions," Cawelti said. "Schools and school systems are not equipped to change themselves."

In the case of skill standards, this characteristic inertia is compounded by uncertainty about mission. "The emergence of standards has provoked discussion in many communities about what schools are for," Cawelti said.

When asked their goals for teaching children in the 21st century, the principals  most recurrent answers were thinking skills, ethics/character, interpersonal skills, respect for diversity, understanding and using technology, and global education. Their list is reminiscent of the "Habits of the Mind" cited by renowned Harlem educator Deborah Meier, Cawelti said, and also some of the "foundation skills" identified by the Secretary s Commission on Necessary Skills (SCANS) which form the basis for many of the emerging skill standards.

Unfortunately, these cross-cutting skills and competencies are far removed from what most American teachers "really teach," Cawelti said -- the traditional academic subjects of English, mathematics, art, history, civics, physical education, and foreign languages. The key to developing critical thinking and other cross-cutting skills lies in interdisciplinary "active learning" -- a sharp departure from the "frontal teaching" approach Cawelti said still predominates in most classrooms.

"Interdisciplinary teaching enables teachers to reinforce each other s work on common themes, shows students the ‘connectedness  of things which deepens their understanding of complex issues, and permits better use of instructional time," he explained. "We need to replace the ‘great American endurance test  with performance-based learning."

Curriculum Reform: the Centerpiece. While much of the recent discussion has focused on school reorganization, the centerpiece of true education reform lies in reformulating the curriculum, Cawelti said. "School organization is only one piece of school restructuring. The only reason it s important is if it helps you improve student achievement." Also critical are community outreach (to parents, businesses, youth-serving agencies, and colleges), Cawelti said, and the use of technology (via distance learning, computers, modems, and multi-media).

The final critical element of Cawelti s "High School Restructuring Model" is incentives: "If you think school teachers are going to work three times as hard to collaborate without any incentives, you ve got another thing coming," he said.

Skill Standards and Community Colleges

Unlike many public schools, "Community colleges will embrace skills standards with gusto," pronounced James McKenney. "We will embrace skill standards because it is in our interest to do so. Skill standards will mean everyone singing out of the same hymnal."

"A community college is like a business," McKenney said, "sometimes a small business but sometimes a very large business." Because community colleges must compete for students and for industry-sponsored training, they are open to new ideas, he explained. "A community college dare not rely on those yellow notes and not respond to local employers. If we can t get our people employed, we ll hear about it real quick."

Portability. "Industry-driven skill standards will be warmly received by community college administrators and instructors," McKenney said. "But it truly has to be industry-driven." All occupational training in community colleges is driven by industry demand, he stressed, and skill standards will be no different. Thus skill standards will have to conform to the needs of employers, or employers will not participate.

Today, however, there is rarely agreement among employers on what the skill requirements are within any given industry -- which will make it tough to develop truly "portable" skill standards, McKenney said. "Inducing agreement among industries [via industry advisory groups] is the key to success," he said, "easier said than done." In all likelihood, he added, even with skill standards, community colleges will still have to tailor their programs to suit the tastes of individual employers.

Technological change will be another challenge to community colleges  capacity to embrace skill standards, McKenney said. For instance, the need to understand treatment of HIV and AIDS is now a critical element of all nursing training. But determining what to drop from the old nursing curriculum in order to teach the new HIV/AIDS material can produce the "biggest catfight on campus," he said. Skill standards will require "fluidity" to keep up with such technology-driven changes in employer skill needs.

Despite these caveats, McKenney remained confident that skill standards will become an integral facet of community college education, and he expressed optimism that over time -- through Tech Prep and other school-to-work programs -- these standards can be driven deep into the educational system. "The excitement I see around Tech Prep tells me that it [a skill-standards system] will be a good vehicle to drive what you re trying to do."

Skill Standards and Guidance

Skill standards present an important opportunity to improve the depth and quality of career guidance offered American schoolchildren, explained Harry Drier, the day's final speaker.

Guidance counselors are for the most part overwhelmed and undervalued in American schools today, Drier said. And the counseling profession is badly in need of revitalization. In thirteen years of primary and secondary education the average child sits for 112,000 minutes of math instruction and 112,000 minutes of English -- but only 82 minutes devoted to career planning and guidance.

Counselors typically find themselves isolated on the school staff. "That positions them uniquely not to be involved in things. You tend to forget about them," Drier said. "[Counselors] want to be full partners."

In order to improve the quality of guidance for American children, counselors primarily need three things, Drier said: better information, better access to students, and a requirement that all children receive instruction and develop competence in employability skills and career planning.

Skill standards, which highlight employability and career awareness, presents a grand opportunity for counselors to meet these needs. "The things we teach in the guidance curriculum will be enhanced," Drier said.

Building an Enhanced Guidance System. Despite the limitations in the guidance system, counselors do have many assets to build on as they attempt to raise the profile of counseling within schools and make counseling a core element of every school s mission.

"We have the best career information system in the world," Drier said. "We have a wonderful infrastructure that s ready to take on new standards." America is also blessed with 150 private vendors of career development information and curricula.

Unfortunately, however, the career guidance materials put out by these vendors conform to no common goals or standards. In general, counselors and their schools are free to pick and choose haphazardly from an endless selection of guidance curricula.

The enactment of skill standards for career guidance could improve this situation considerably, Drier said. He recommended that federal and state education agencies "surround commercial vendors with information on where we re going" in guidance. Drier recommended also that the federal government exert pressure on states to develop state standards for career development and guidance. "If you re going to use federal funds," Drier said, "you should have to use a state standard for career information."

Finally, Drier recommended that steps be taken to revitalize the guidance counseling profession. "Most counselors in the U.S. are kinda gray," he said, "all in our 50s and 60s."

Following the Soviet's Sputnik launch in the 1950 s, the federal government for several years subsidized the training of counselors in order to steer young people toward careers in science and engineering. "We can do that again," Drier said, "training counselors to new goals."

Looking Forward: More Discussion on Skill Standards

Following Drier's presentation, participants at the forum engaged in a lively question and answer session. During this discussion three skill standards-related issues were identified as possible topics for future Forum luncheons: assessment for skill standards; the relationship between skill standards and job evaluation; and the tensions between portability of skill standards and the desire for local flexibility.  An informal poll of participants found that assessment is the most critical concern and ought to be the topic for the next Forum devoted to skill standards implementation.

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