What are the top skills employers demand? Communication skills, judgement and decision making, active listening to name a few. These skills are referred to as soft skills, or non-cognitive skills that are not measured by a cognitive or academic test, like IQ, for example.

In an age when our economy demands more college grads in order to fill the jobs of the future and to be globally competitive, the answer has been to make our classes harder and rank students, schools, and teachers by the scores students earn on their standardized test. Put more effort behind increasing IQ and get a better prepared workforce, right?

Wrong. Little to no research gives evidence that more rigorous classes or standardized tests will lead to more college graduates, according to the review, “Teaching Adolescents to Become Learners.” In fact, studies show the best indicator of success in college is not the difficulty level of classes a student took in high school or their standardized test scores, but rather their course grades, GPA, and class rank.

Researchers argue these standings are much more indicative of a student’s academic and economic potential because they measure, in part, the transferable and non-cognitive skills a student possesses:

“The prevailing interpretation is that, in addition to measuring students’ content knowledge and core academic skills, grades also reflect the degree to which students have demonstrated a range of academic behaviors, attitudes, and strategies that are critical for success in school and in later life, including study skills, attendance, work habits, time management, help-seeking behaviors, metacognitive strategies, and social and academic problem-solving skills that allow students to successfully manage new environments and meet new academic and social demands. To this list of critical success factors, others have added students’ attitudes about learning, their beliefs about their own intelligence, their self-control and persistence, and the quality of their relationships with peers and adults.”

This is one reason why parents put their kids on a soccer team, students are told to get involved in activities so they can highlight them on their college application,  and job seekers have a place to showcase their extracurricular achievements on their resumes. While there is no direct economic value to a child playing soccer, it is thought of as a social activity where people acquire the non-cognitive, or social and behavioral, skills that are necessary to get along with people at school and in the workplace, learn responsibility to a team, balance school and life, work under pressure, etc.

While classroom time is traditionally thought of as  a time to develop cognitive skills and after-school time is used for non-cognitive, the two skill sets are inextricably linked and don’t need to be exclusive. At LifeBound we train K-12 teachers, professors, advisors, tutors, and staff to use coaching skills to capitalize on the time they have with students and develop these non-cognitive skills for success in school, career, and life.

Through the coaching process, students answer questions and engage in self-reflective activities to mindfully create:

• Vision for what is possible
• Balance in their academic, social, and emotional lives
• Perspectives on the challenges they face and the choices they make
• Accountability to themselves and others
• Fulfillment from making choices that align with core values
• Habits of success to help address their personal strengths and weaknesses

What would your brightest students be capable of if they developed their non-cognitive skills alongside their cognitive? How would your struggling students benefit if they were asked powerful questions and learned to ask themselves powerful questions when they need help?

If you’re in the Denver area, join us on November 1 for a one-day Introduction to Academic Coaching. This training will give you a thorough introduction to the coaching process as well as leave you with coaching skills you can use Monday morning.  If you are interested in LifeBound coming to your area, email me at caroljcarter@lifebound.com for more information.

This summer, we partnered with the National Repository of Online Courses (NROC) to present a summer series of FREE webinars on Academic Coaching.  Over the past few weeks we’ve presented on the following topics, which are now available to view on archive.

SESSION 1: Coaching for College and Career Readiness: It’s Not What You Know, It’s What You Know How To Do

Presented by Carol Carter, Maureen Breeze, and Lynn Troyka

This session shares hands-on ideas of how educators can coach students to master specific, practical connections for excelling in reading, writing and math. We discuss the development of professional skills as well as setting structures for accountability, challenge, and growth that can ensure success in college, career, and life.

WATCH NOW

SESSION 2: Academic Coaching for Advisors and Student Success Staff

Presented by Carol Carter and Maureen Breeze

In this informational webinar tailored to student success staff and advisors, participants will learn about various academic coaching strategies and professional development options for student services staff supporting redesign efforts in developmental education.

Through academic coaching, faculty and advisors ask powerful questions and promote deeper level thinking to help students make connections, set goals and action plans, create a vision for the future, and develop persistence, grit and accountability.

WATCH NOW

SESSION 3: Introduction to Academic Coaching for Reading and Writing Faculty

Presented by Carol Carter 

In this informational webinar tailored to reading and writing instructors, viewers learn about various academic coaching strategies to support reading, writing and critical thinking skills necessary for college success. Discover how academic coaching promotes academic, professional and life success.

WATCH NOW

Coming up this Thursday, August 22, is the final session of the NROC/LifeBound summer series. Space is limited.

SESSION 4: Introduction to Academic Coaching for Math Faculty

Thursday, August 22

2:00 pm ET

Presented by Maureen Breeze

In this informational webinar tailored to math instructors, participants will learn about various academic coaching strategies to support math understanding and quantitative reasoning skills for college success. Discover how academic coaching promotes academic, professional and life success.

REGISTER NOW

What are some webinar topics you would like to attend? I look forward to hearing from you in the comment section.

Professionals and athletes aren’t the only people who can benefit from a coach, students who participated in an academic coaching program found increased retention and graduation rates.  Through the process of coaching, students deepen their learning, take responsibility for their actions, improve their effectiveness, and consciously create their outcomes in life.

How can you use coaching to improve student outcomes? LifeBound’s Academic Coaching Training is a great professional development option for professors, teachers, administrators, counselors, and other education professionals who want to learn to be a coach for their student by listening, asking powerful questions, and encouraging problem solving. Our next 3-day coaching session is June 24-26. Let me know if you would like to learn more about our Academic Coaching Training in the comments or by sending an email to contact@lifebound.com.

This spring we’re definitely not sitting still at LifeBound. In the next few months we have many new events, trainings, blogs, and more that will reach communities who are dedicated to improving learning opportunities for students, teachers, and professionals. One initiative we’re supporting all summer long is to get more students involved in productive learning activities over the summer months.

Research shows all young people experience learning losses when they do not engage in educational activities during the summer. That’s why LifeBound is offering summer enrichment workshops at Lighthouse Writers Workshop for students in middle school through high school that foster self-awareness, critical thinking, and practical know-how. You can find out more about our week-long workshops for teens at our website. We are also encouraging students to read over the summer with our book display at the Tattered Cover Book Store on Colfax.

Coming up on Wednesday, April 10th, I’m excited to give a keynote to faculty at University of Oklahoma’s First-Year Experience Program. If you’re in the area, the event is free and open to the public. You can find out more at the event website.

Also coming up this month, is our three-day academic coaching training. Academic Coaching is an ongoing partnership to help students produce fulfilling results in their lives. Through the process of coaching, students deepen their learning, take responsibility for their actions, improve their effectiveness, and consciously create their outcomes in life. We conduct trainings for professors, teachers, administrators, and counselors. LifeBound Academic Coaching trainings are available year-round. Learn about our lead trainers, check out upcoming dates, and register for your next coaching session at our coaching website www.lifeboundcoaching.com.

Last but not least, I am now blogging for the Huffington Post under “Impact”.  For the next two months, I will be focusing on remedial students, posting every Tuesday.  Check out my most read article, “Why Aren’t Low Income Students Succeeding in School?” You’ll see some of the best insights include what readers posted in response.  Below is a sample of some of the topics I will be exploring in the future. Let me know in the comments if you have any additional ideas for blog topics.

• “From Trailer Park to Corporate Executive: One Woman’s Path to Personal and Professional Success”
• “Where Are We Struggling With Literacy?”
• “Why And How Are We Struggling with Innumeracy?”
• “Why And How Are We Struggling with Thinking Skills?”
• “Why And How Are We Struggling with Communication?”
• “Pipeline Success for Developmental Students.”

I look forward to sharing more about this eventful season. For inquiries about academic coaching, speaking engagements, summer reading, and anything else, call the LifeBound office at 1-877-737-8510.

As more students flock to colleges to earn a degree and better their chances at employment, more students are landing in developmental education courses before they can enroll in a degree-earning program. Though the demand for workers with a college degree only continues to increase in the 21st century workforce, college retention and graduation rates have failed to make significant gains.

Some states that are determined to greatly increase the number of college graduates are redesigning their developmental education programs in hopes of finding more potential graduates in the population of remedial students; a population which is significantly less likely than their non-remediated peers to graduate from college. In 2009, 29% of Colorado’s college students required remediation in reading, writing or mathematics, and over half (53%) of students attending two-year institutions needed remediation. Of 100 students enrolled in the lowest level of developmental math, only four will graduate.¹

Many remedial students must take at least three remedial courses per subject before being able to enroll in a credit-earning college class. Remedial classes can quickly become costly for the student in both time and money. Research shows that the longer students spend taking remedial classes, the more likely they are to drop out before earning a degree. Colorado, along with handful of other states, is trying to retain more developmental students by accelerating courses and decreasing the time students spend in developmental classes.

In a study that used a database of over 45,000 student observations, researchers found that shorter, more intensive courses earned students better grades than a 16-week semester.² Developmental education programs are using findings such as these to redesign their curriculum to speak specifically to the needs of developmental students. One method states like Colorado are using to retain more remedial students is to accelerate the remedial process by merging topics like reading and writing into a single semester-long course. Another is allowing students to simultaneously enroll in a remedial course while taking a college-level course so that they’re getting remediated while moving toward earning a college degree.

Developmental education must be redesigned to become a springboard for students instead of a wall. The workforce is different for youth today, and more employers will require degree holders to fill their positions. A recent study by The Chronicle and Marketplace  found many employers filter resumes by whether or not a job candidate holds a 4-year degree. They also found two-thirds of employers will not waive degree requirements for a new applicant.³

What can be done in K12 to eliminate the need for developmental education at the college level? What are other needs that are specific to developmental students that need to be met in a developmental course?

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Sources:

1 Colorado Proposal Narrative Statements, http://www.completecollege.org/docs/Colorado%20Proposal%20Narrative%20Statements.pdf
² Impact of Course Length on Student Learning, http://www.economics-finance.org/jefe/econ/Gustafsonpaper.pdf
^{3 “}A College Degree Sorts Job Applicants, but Employers Wish It Meant More,” http://chronicle.texterity.com/chronicle/20130308a/?pg=26&pm=2&u1=friend#pg26

A new study by the Milken Institute found a strong relationship between a well-educated population and a region’s economic performance.¹ Though it’s common knowledge that well-educated workers often make more money and have better jobs than less-educated workers, this study stands out in that it also found that just by their geographic location, less-educated people can make more money if they live in the same area as more-educated people.

Other key findings from the report include:

• Education increases regional prosperity. Adding one year to the average years of schooling among the employed in a metropolitan area is associated with an increase of real GDP per capita of more than ten percent, and an increase in real wages per worker of more than eight percent.
• Better educated = bigger benefits. The better educated the worker, the greater the benefit of additional schooling, to both the worker and the region. Add one year of college to a region’s workforce, for instance, and GDP per capita jumps 17.4 percent.
• Clusters count. In metros with clusters of high-skilled occupations, the share of workers holding at least a master’s degree is much higher than in metros without significant clusters, perhaps because of the intense competition for employment.

 

In order to use the findings to improve the economy, one recommendation by the institute is to increase the number of college graduates. As we all know, this is easier said than done. One of the greatest barriers that stands between a student and graduation is unpreparedness. This unpreparedness can start as early as preschool, and if not addressed, will stick with the student until graduation day, if they are lucky enough to make it there. Many of today’s students and high school graduates understand the need for some form of higher education in order to have real career options in the 21st century. However, many students today get left behind in K-12 and enter college unprepared, often taking developmental (or remedial) courses before they can enroll in a college-level course.

If you read my blog earlier this week you know every year 1.7 million 4-year and 2-year students will enroll in a remedial course. The vast majority of these students will not enroll in a college-level course.  Today I am leading the session Professionalism for Developmental Students:  Workplace Mindsets for Classroom Success at the NADE conference. I’ll be answering questions like: “How Does Lack of Preparation at the College Level Impede Employment?” and “How Can Faculty Set Expectations for Professional Success in Your Developmental Class?” Today’s students — developmental or otherwise — need to be held accountable for coming to class, doing the work, and passing the course. Today’s educators need to get an investment from their students and make a choice to show how the skills they are teaching will impact the student’s future prosperity. Not until we have accountable students and educators will we begin to have the graduation rates we desire.

This is LifeBound’s last day at the NADE conference. If you haven’t stopped by our booth, come say hello and learn more about becoming an academic coach for your students. You can also visit our coaching website at www.lifeboundcoaching.com.

¹“Better Higher Education Leads to a Better Regional Economy, Report Says.” The Chronicle. <http://chronicle.com/blogs/bottomline/better-higher-education-leads-to-a-better-regional-economy-report-says/>
²A Matter of Degrees: The Effect of Educational Attainment on Regional Economic Prosperity.” The Milken Institute. <http://www.milkeninstitute.org/publications/publications.taf?function=detail&ID=38801395&cat=resrep>

As many as 1.7 million first-year students will take a remedial course to learn the math, reading, or writing skills they need to enroll in a credit-earning college-level course. Of all remedial courses most students are remediated in math skills. Due to a variety of factors — class dynamics, curricula, instruction,  skill-level, academic support, financial standing, life — retaining and passing students in a remedial course is a major concern.

Colorado Community College System conducted a longitudinal remedial math study that tracked remedial math students for 4 years. They found that though the majority of students required remedial math, math had the lowest pass rate of all remedial classes.

• Only 8% of students who enrolled in remedial math had graduated after four years
• Unlike the findings of a national study, the majority exited the sequence due to withdrawal or failure to pass a course, rather than completing and failing to enroll in the next course
• More than 40% of CCCS remedial math completers did not attempt college math

How can we equip these students with the tools to stick with and pass a remedial class? You’ll know from my blog earlier this week that ideally I believe more resources should be used at the K12-level to address learning difficulties before students graduate from high school and enter college. However, eliminating the need for remediation will not happen over night. What can we do today for the students who are graduating from high school with the dream of graduating from college, but who don’t have the skills to do so?

Academic Coaching promotes student accountability, motivation, and follow-through. It asks the student to not only do their homework, but to make a commitment to studying, getting a tutor, finding a support system, and passing the class. A faculty member with Academic Coaching skills asks the struggling developmental student powerful questions that puts the student in the driver’s seat of their own learning and asks them to invest in their own success.  LifeBound is at the National Association of Developmental Education (NADE) Conference this week sharing the benefits of using Academic Coaching with developmental students with faculty from around the country. Today, Maureen Breeze is giving the session Academic Coaching for Hybrid, Online, and Self-Paced Math to train faculty to use academic coaching skills to inspire students to persevere and foster success in any level or mode of math class.

If you’re at the NADE conference is Denver, make sure to come say hello to LifeBound in the exhibit hall.

This week, Denver will be hosting the National Association for Developmental Education Conference.  This organization is made up of thousands of members who are dedicated to helping students who come to college without the skills required to enroll in a college-level course in math, reading or writing. As many as 1.7 million first-year students entering both two-year and four-year colleges will take a remedial course to learn the skills they need to enroll in a college-level course. Less than one-quarter of students attending a two-year college who take a remedial course will complete a college-level English or math class.¹

For many students who need to take remedial courses, they will be required to take up to three remedial courses per discipline before qualifying to enroll in a credit-earning class.² In some states, like Colorado, change is afoot.  Instead of offering three classes in math and three in English and reading, these classes will be collapsed into one class for each discipline.   Much of the learning will be self-paced at community colleges where the student to advisor ratio is 1500 to 1.³Â  Students will need to take initiative for their own learning, work with staff when they have questions they need answered and be accountable for their own personal improvement plans. These steps will provide a successful on ramp to other classes that are more challenging and require more rigor, self-discipline and collaboration with classmates once these basic requirements are met.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in partnership with Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Lumina Foundation and The Kresge Foundation are asking the developmental community to rethink how developmental math is taught, and they have an ambitious  goal to increase the percent of developmental students who earn credit for a college-level math class from 5 to 50 percent. The Carnegie Foundation knows that students who have a history of struggling in math classes will most likely continue to fail in math classes that mirror their past experiences of failure. That’s why they created two math improvement communities at the college-level: Statway and Quantway.

Statway is a one-year program designed for students transferring to degrees in humanities or social sciences which culminates to a college-level statistics class. Quantway similarly is a one-year course that culminates to a college-level quantitative math course. This course is different than your typical developmental math course in that it “will motivate and engage students with an innovative quantitative reasoning focus in which students use mathematics and numerical reasoning to make sense of the world around them.” The goal is to have students become “quantitatively literate students,” opposed to memorization machines.⁴

In Colorado, 1 in 5 students are in concurrent enrollment programs that allow the student to earn a high school diploma, while simultaneously earning an Associate’s Degree.⁵ Concurrent enrollment programs are appealing because they pay for two years of a student’s college education; encourage students to pursue 4-year degrees after graduation; and give high school students an opportunity to take remedial courses before moving on to college. On the other hand, a new report shows that the number of students taking remedial courses in a concurrent enrollment program grew 39.2 percent between the 2010-11 and 2011-12 school year.⁶ Concurrent enrollment programs are being used as a strategy to prepare more high school students with the basic skills they need before moving on to college. Though there is no argument that we need to prepare students to enter college while they’re still in high school, why isn’t there a focus on preparing students for college-level courses when they are in elementary, middle, and high school? Shouldn’t students be mastering high school classes in high school to prepare them for college courses, not mastering remedial college math courses while they’re still in high school?

While concurrent enrollment is a good idea for students who want to pursue the trades—careers in welding, auto mechanics, refrigeration, etc—it is a grave concern to me on other levels:

1. Where are the emotional and social skills that students need to mature so that they can succeed and thrive when they are in college?  If they are spending all of their time on college academics while they are in high school, what is the point of the community college?  How will they ever get the experience and maturity that they need to succeed personally and professionally?
2. The majority of concurrent enrollment classes take place at high schools, not on college campuses. Taking a college course down the hall from other high school courses fails to introduce students to college culture and expectations. Which is not to imply that more classes should be taught on college campuses. I’m all for high school students being on a college campus, but why not for summer enrichment, summer reading programs with experts or even college mentors and role models who can inspire and direct students?
3. Community colleges can barely keep up with the demand of returning students and displaced workers.  Now we are setting up a structure to engorge that system even further with high school students?
4. Why can’t we make high school more effective?  Why can’t we have more reading requirements, more activities that students join to build their professional skills, more ways to make high school a time where students prepare for the rigor and complexities of college, career and life?

Are we overemphasizing analytical and academic skills at the expense of the “soft” skills and experiences that students actually need to know themselves, understand what they are good at, be able to overcome challenges, think critically and creatively, and determine what makes them unique in the world?  If so, what is the short and long term cost?    Marching students through all of these courses does little to address the issues that they really struggle with on a personal level which, unadrressed,  absolutely stands in the way of their academic, personal, and professional success.

It’s clear that literacy is important to America’s future, however, it’s also clear that we should begin to worry about what is to come if literacy scores in the U.S. continues to decrease.

Both the SAT and ACT scores in 2012 show poor reading levels. The SAT showed an average score that was one point lower than last year’s, and the lowest since 1972 (Layton and Brown 1-2). According to college readiness benchmarks in the SAT, only 49% of test takers were ready for critical reading at the college level (College Board 24). Only 57% of grads who took the ACT met their benchmark for reading scores, which is much the same result as last year’s tests; in fact, the average composite score for the ACT hasn’t shown much change at all in either direction since 2008 (ACT, Inc. 1,16). The reason these particular tests are important in evaluating high school graduates is because they’re one of the most important evaluation tools a college uses to determine whether an applicant should be admitted. As such, the tests are widely recognized by colleges as trustworthy in determining whether or not a student is ready for college-level work.

Though these poor results are measurable in the late teens, they find their root in early childhood. A report entitled Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, which came out in 1998, listed some issues of that time that America is still facing in regards to teaching our young children. They point out first that a large number of our young students have difficulty learning to read, and that this is particularly true for low-income, non-white, or non-English speaking children. These issues are exacerbated by the increasing levels of learning disabilities observed among students today, many of which are directly associated with difficulty learning to read (dyslexia, e.g.). In addition, federal responses to these issues, including investments and programs, often don’t reflect current research regarding reading development and young childhood (Snow, Burns, and Griffin 17-18).

The most basic literacy skills might be sufficient for a workforce that still resembled the industrial era, but tomorrow’s workforce will need more than the ability to read a sign or a menu. Tomorrow’s workers will be expected to collaborate online with individuals who could be on the other side of the globe, adapt to new requirements and learn new skills as fields rapidly shift and change, and keep up with an increasingly hyper-connected world, not to mention graduate from high school and earn a certificate or degree.

We must make literacy a priority in our schools, homes, and community. We need more out-of-school resources for the students who don’t get their needs met during the school day. We need more parents reading and speaking to their children from the day they are born. We need the community to step in and provide free learning opportunities in order to give underprivileged students the same learning opportunities as their more affluent peers.

We all can make a a difference. Sign up to read to young children at the library, donate books to a school, mentor a child, or start a summer learning initiative.

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/11/05/record-shares-of-young-adults-have-finished-both-high-school-and-college/4/#section-3-high-school-completion-among-young-adults

More U.S. students are graduating from high school and college than ever before, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis. The increase in grads can be attributed in large to our changed economy. Since the 2007 recession, students have been drilled on the importance of having an education in order to land a job in a highly competitive job market. Adults have also returned to school to gain higher pay, change careers, or increase their level of education after a layoff.

The Pew Research Center analysis found:

• 90% of young adults (ages 25-29) in the U.S. have a high school education.
• 63% of young adults (ages 25-29) in the U.S. have completed at least some college.

The analysis also found significant changes in college populations over the last 30 years. In the 1970s:

• 36% of Americans said a college education is “very important.” (1978)
• 17% of the college-age population were non-white. (1971)

In the 2000s:

• 75% of Americans said a college education is “very important.” (2010)
• 44% of the college-age population is non-white. (2012)

Though the growing and diversifying population of high school and college grads are stabilizing us at home, experts question if it will be enough to keep our position as a global leader in higher education. Many developed countries are simultaneously working toward becoming a global power in higher education, and have a faster annual growth rate for graduates than the U.S.

As long as we keep growing minds in this knowledge-based economy, we can keep our edge and compete with other developed countries for the best innovators, jobs, schools, and teachers. As we prepare more students for the world of work than ever before, we also need to help them find their uniqueness in an evermore competitive and global workforce. We must emphasis entrepreneurial, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills. We must help students fuse the gap between high school or college graduation and a career. Now that we have more students dedicated to earning an education, we must work to give all equal access to the best education and help them make connections between their education and the rest of their lives.

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Sources:

“Record Shares of Young Adults Have Finished Both High School and College,” By Richard Fry and Kim Parker. 5 November 2012. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/11/05/record-shares-of-young-adults-have-finished-both-high-school-and-college/#overview