September/October 2008

Teaching 21st Century Skills

What does it look like in practice?

by Nancy Walser

Call it a quiet revolution. As 2014 approaches—the deadline for all students to be proficient on state tests—academics, educators, business groups, and policymakers are finding common ground in a movement to bring “21st century skills” to the classroom, prompting state agencies and district leaders across the country to rewrite curriculum standards and even to contemplate big changes to existing state testing systems.

What are 21st century skills, who’s pushing them, and what does 21st century teaching look like in practice?

Although definitions vary, most lists of 21st century skills include those needed to make the best use of rapidly changing technologies; the so-called “soft skills” that computers can’t provide, like creativity; and those considered vital to working and living in an increasingly complex, rapidly changing global society (see “Skills for a New Century,” p. 2).

“Some of these skills have always been important but are now taking on another meaning—like collaboration. Now you have to be able to collaborate across the globe with someone you might never meet,” explains Christopher Dede, a Harvard professor who sits on the Massachusetts 21st Century Skills Task Force. “Some are unique to the 21st century. It’s only relatively recently, for example, that you could get two million hits on an [Internet] search and have to filter down to five that you want.”

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Getting and Spending

Schools and districts share lessons on the effective uses of philanthropy

by Lucy Hood

In 2001, the Carnegie Corporation of New York teamed up with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to invest a combined $60 million in high school reform; earlier this year, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation announced a $23.5 million grant to support three charter school organizations in Los Angeles; and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation decided to give the Dallas Independent School District $5 million to assist with the collection of student and teacher data.

These donations represent a very small sample of the private funding that goes into public schools. A mere snapshot, this list highlights the dollar amounts now available to at least some public schools; the people, foundations, and corporations behind the money; and the kinds of educational programs they are supporting.

The amount of private money going into public education has been on the rise since A Nation at Risk declared in 1983 that the educational standards of American schoolchildren were alarmingly low and threatened the nation’s competitive edge. Regardless of the denomination—$1,000, $50,000, or $30 million—the grant money available to public schools is expected to grow for years to come. The challenge facing most school districts is not only how to get this money, but how to use it effectively.

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Creating a Culture of Reciprocal Accountability

How five new principals won their faculties' support for schoolwide reforms

by Gerald C. Leader

Principals new to their schools must win the trust and respect of their faculty and students. Administrators embarking on a whole-school, standards-based change agenda often find this to be the most difficult task they face as they ask teachers and students involved in the reform to relinquish old habits and learn new skills. Until a school community is able to embrace change efforts as its own, there is always the potential that a leader will meet with resistance when altering the status quo.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Boston Public Schools was a chronically dysfunctional school system. Teachers were ill equipped to instruct to high standards a population composed predominantly of high-poverty immigrant and minority students. Assisted by the award-winning reform efforts of superintendent Thomas Payzant, the five administrators whose stories are showcased below were on the vanguard of urban school leadership in that critical time, believing schools could make a difference in student achievement. And they worked hard to prove it.

Prompted by the 1998 Massachusetts Department of Education’s high-stakes MCAS performance test, these leaders pioneered many of the school community-building and instructional innovations that would prove necessary to meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind legislation that was enacted late into their tenures.

Each of the five principals developed and implemented a unique change strategy, but in most cases the recurring thread in the approaches they took to garnering the trust and allegiance of their respective faculties was creating a culture of reciprocal accountability. Sensitive to the needs, values, and priorities of their school populations, they acted accordingly, and teachers became more likely to embrace change efforts as their own.

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