Brian M. Stack's School Leadership Blog

Article written exclusively for the Hechinger Report OpEd Over the last five years, a student-centered personalized-learning model known as competency education has gained more and more traction as states have developed policies to promote its adoption in both elementary and secondary schools. According to the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) , an organization that supports much of that policy development, forty three states have developed some degree of state policy flexibility that allows local schools to move to competency education, with nearly a dozen states taking an active role to promote the model in their schools. Ensuring that all students succeed in building college and career readiness has always been the primary goal of American schools, but today’s definition of readiness differs greatly from the one that industrialist Andrew Carnegie used over a century ago when he first proposed a model whereby schools would use the amount of ins

Recently I had the opportunity to attend a large networking event with business leaders from my community. When I asked them what we (the school system) could be doing to better prepare students for their workplaces, I was not surprised to learn that employers are less concerned about a potential employee’s academic preparation but care more about their “employability” skills. Employers want to know how well potential employees will work on a team. They want to know that these applicants have great communication and problem-solving skills. They are curious to what degree new employees will have the grit and determination necessary to persevere through a situation and see it to a resolution. If schools are to truly prepare their students for their future, these non-cognitive skills must be developed, refined, and assessed in much the same way as cognitive academic skills are. Depending on the school and the state, these skills go by different names, including 21 st century skill

Last month, The Nation’s Alissa Quart put the spotlight on teacher salaries in her article, Teachers are Working for Uber Just to Keep a Foothold in the Middle Class . Quart highlighted Matt Barry, a public high school history teacher in the suburbs of San Jose who at 32 has taken a part time job with Uber to support his wife Nicole and their soon-to-be-born child. As teachers, Barry and his wife each bring in about $70,000 annually, but it isn’t enough for them to afford a home in their community of Gilroy, CA where the median home price is $650,000 and the cost of living far exceeds their income as public school teachers. Barry tries to make up the difference by driving for Uber. Quart quoted Barry as saying, “Teachers are killing themselves. I shouldn’t be having to drive Uber 8 o’clock on a weekday. I just shut down from the mental toll: grading papers in between rides, thinking of what I could be doing instead of driving—like creating a curriculum.” Barry’s story is no