Deploy a skills-based approach to modernize classrooms

The Nation’s Report Card shows Virginia fourth graders recorded the largest declines in reading and math in the nation. Gov. Glenn Youngkin described the learning losses of Virginia fourth and eighth grade students on the national reading and mathematics tests as catastrophic, as outlined in the 2022 National Assessment for Educational Progress.

The Program for International Student Assessment is an international assessment administered every three years that measures what 15-year-old students have learned in math, reading and science. It reports U.S. students show no improvement in the academic performance gap which affects our global competitiveness.

A shortage of a skilled workforce has become one of the major limiting factors in sustaining and expanding advanced manufacturing in Virginia. Employers are looking for graduates with the needed employable skills to grow their businesses while providing an economic pathway into the middle class and beyond for their employees.

According to a report from JFF (Jobs for the Future), 81% of employers think they should be hiring based on the skills someone has rather than the degree they were awarded, and 68% think they should be hiring graduates of programs that don’t even award degrees, as long as the students learn the right skills. Jobs for the Future drives transformation of the American workforce and education systems to achieve equitable economic advancement for all.

More employers are starting to embrace skills-based hiring practices. Boeing, Walmart, Google and IBM have signed on to the Rework America Alliance, pledging to implement skills-based practices. Such practices help open opportunities to nontraditional candidates, including people without specific or typical credentials on their résumés. It helps communities by creating more and better job opportunities for a broader, diverse pool of workers.

To sustain and launch best practice programs, schools should consider redesigning schedules, assessments and student support to ensure systems provide equity in everyone’s education. Schools need to pursue a competency-based learning (CBL) approach, reflecting a deep belief that the education system needs to change to become a more inclusive and learner-centered approach.

To help deploy and validate the success of the CBL initiative, ETS, the world’s largest private nonprofit educational testing and assessment organization, and the Carnegie Foundation are envisioning a process to prepare and measure students’ skills.

The potential changes in measuring education experience come as the conversation about shifting to a “skills-based” approach to jobs and hiring has exploded.

Companies have long evaluated new employees through post-secondary credentialing, college degrees and years of field experience. In school, learning has been measured by “credit hours” — the time spent in a classroom — since

1906. As the economy evolves, technology advances and the workforce changes, individuals will need to have the relevant skills, intellectual curiosity and a willingness to learn and adapt to all the new-collar jobs.

A new-collar worker is an individual who develops the technical and soft skills needed to work in jobs through nontraditional educational pathways. These workers may not have a four-year college degree, but are instead trained through career and technical programs, community colleges, vocational schools, software boot camps, industry certification programs, on-the job apprenticeships and internships.

We need an educational renaissance where technology along with the latest skills and competency-based models are adopted and deployed. We must allow every student to learn at their own pace to reach their maximum potential, to include re-skilling or up-skilling for older workers.

Youngkin is moving the commonwealth toward skills-based hiring practices that will require the schools to graduate more skilled career-ready citizens. Schools were not the sole cause of achievement losses. Nor will they be the sole solution. It will take each community to take a bipartisan approach to transforming education to meet the needs of the new-collar job market in Virginia.

Glenn Marshall of Williamsburg serves on the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) Management Team and leads best practice sharing through benchmarking to close the skills gap for the 4.0 Digital and Industrial Revolution. Email him at marsh8279@aol.com. Learn more at ame.org.