If you’re looking to make connections between the AASL Standards and 21st century student learning, take a look at this Boston Globe editorial:

If students are to succeed in today’s complex economy, they need to know more than just English, math, science, and history. They also need a range of analytic and workplace skills. So says an important new report on 21st-century skills, which concludes that though Massachusetts schools have made impressive progress in the last 15 years, many students still don’t graduate with the abilities today’s jobs require.“In our high schools, we need to prepare our young adults to be college and career ready,” says Gerald Chertavian, chairman of the state board of education task force that prepared the report. “Unfortunately we are not in that position today.”Indeed, a depressing new study that headlined Monday’s Globe found that though Boston sent some 64 percent of the class of 2000 to college, seven years later only about 35 percent had actually graduated. Further, according to a recent study by the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, state employers say high school graduates lack essential job skills.Mastering those skills means learning how to think critically and creatively, work collaboratively, use the Internet to do research, and communicate clearly and effectively. Students also need to be responsible and accountable, to be up on the news, and to have a workable knowledge of economics and business.

 

Responsible? Accountable? These fit in with our AASL dispositions. Collaboration? Critical thinking? We find them in the AASL Standards, too.  More ammo for your toolkit if you need it!Â

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Standards, Collaboration, Global Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.