The Common Core and the Case for More

In just a few short months, school districts around the country will begin to formally implement the Common Core. For those not in the know, the Common Core State Standards were developed as a framework for all 50 states to provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn. Forty-five states and the District of Columbia have formally signed on. The current set of standards covers just two subject areas, Mathematics Standards and English Language Arts Standards, but it’s a very good start.

The new uniform set of standards also take steps toward ensuring America is producing future citizens who are better prepared for life in the 21 Century. You see, Common Core is not only designed to achieve mastery of subject matter appropriate to each grade level, but to also teach skills that are vital in this new Century:

… the skills and understandings students are expected to demonstrate have wide applicability outside the classroom or workplace. Students who meet the Standards readily undertake the close, attentive reading that is at the heart of understanding and enjoying complex works of literature. They habitually perform the critical reading necessary to pick carefully through the staggering amount of information available today in print and digitally. They actively seek the wide, deep, and thoughtful engagement with high-quality literary and informational texts that builds knowledge, enlarges experience, and broadens worldviews. They reflexively demonstrate the cogent reasoning and use of evidence that is essential to both private deliberation and responsible citizenship in a democratic republic. In short, students who meet the Standards develop the skills in reading, writing, speaking, and listening that are the foundation for any creative and purposeful expression in language.

Objectives such as these are vital to the future success of any student. Still, the Common Core needs to go further, both in terms of the subject matter covered and in more specifically addressing the full range of contemporary skills and knowledge our global society demands.

My company, Pathbrite recently completed informal research looking at nearly 100 “Corner Office” interviews with corporate CEOs and senior executives in the business section of the Sunday New York Times over the last several years. In these interviews, business leaders are regularly asked about how they build their teams and what they look for when bringing on new talent. According to our analysis of these interviews, the top ten attributes executives look for in a new hire is:

1. Collaboration abilities;
2. Passion;
3. An ability to overcome challenges;
4. Reflective abilities;
5. Problem-solving skills;
6. Curiosity and a passion for continuous learning;
7. Communication skills;
8. Adaptability and flexibility;
9. Self awareness; and
10. An ability to deliver impact through their work.

Unfortunately, our education system isn’t sufficiently teaching or otherwise inculcating these skills in our nation’s students—or, if they are, they’re failing to measure them. This puts both our young people and our nation at a strategic disadvantage in a globalized economy. While most employers want to see a Bachelor’s degree, it’s increasingly nothing more than an opening ante. Google’s senior vice president for people operations, Laszlo Bock, was interviewed for the “Corner Office” and spoke to this trend in pretty blunt terms recently:

One of the things we’ve seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless — no correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there’s a slight correlation. Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript and G.P.A.’s and test scores, but we don’t anymore, unless you’re just a few years out of school. We found that they don’t predict anything.

What’s interesting is the proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time as well. So we have teams where you have 14 percent of the team made up of people who’ve never gone to college.

So how do we equip young people with the evidence required to demonstrate to a college admissions officer or employers like Google that they’ve got what it takes to succeed? At Pathbrite, we’re tackling that question with our next-generation ePortfolio Platform, which incorporates rubrics from the Common Core State Standards (K-12) and those produced by AAC+U (higher ed) to change the way people teach, learn, and grow. We seek to enable learning-by-doing and provide students the tools to curate, organize and present all the evidence of knowledge and achievement—including the requirements from our Top Ten List of Employability Traits above. But there are other ideas about how to move beyond standardized test scores and GPAs, like those advanced by The Gallup Organization. And I’m sure there are still other amazing ideas that I’ve not included here.

While the new Common Core standards begins to address the knowledge, skills and abilities required for 21 Century citizenship, they’ve got farther to go. A high school diploma must stand for more than it does today, as should a college degree. And the clock is ticking. It’s the only way our nation will stay great over the next 100 years.

Read more coverage of the Aspen Ideas Festival from Influencers:

• Arianna Huffington: Should the U.S. Require a Year of Service?
• Don Peppers: Coming Soon -- A Car That Lives in the 'Cloud'
• Mark Mobius: What the Stock Market Is Telling Us About the Economy
• Charles Best: How Crowdfunding Could Save the Arts
• Chester Elton: The Stealth Ways to Network at Conferences

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