Education Next – Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst
“From the 1990s until the end of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2015, state and federal education reform policies had a virtually exclusive focus on holding public schools accountable for student test scores in reading and mathematics. The new Every Student Succeeds Act, the successor to NCLB, provides an opening for states to broaden their accountability regimes by including a non-traditional measure along with academic test scores. One possibility that has been embraced by many advocates is some type of measurement of student soft skills, which include social skills, self-management abilities, academic soft skills such as listening carefully to instructions, and approaches to learning such as willingness to take on challenging tasks.”(more)