We often hear from school and district leaders who agree that durable skills matter, yet so does being accountable for meeting academic standards, strengthening teacher retention, preparing graduates for the future, and so many other priorities.
The reality is that leaders don’t have the luxury of choosing one over the other, even as the rapid pace of technological change, including the rise of AI, only heightens the need to prepare students differently. What if, instead, durable skills could serve as a way of addressing these collective needs?
Research indicates that these kinds of skills—such as creative problem-solving, navigating ambiguity and working collaboratively—support academic progress by encouraging greater student engagement and deeper learning. That’s exactly the kind of learning environment that keeps educators energized, connected and committed to their work.
Meanwhile, durable skills are also essential to preparing K12 students for the workforce and a world that is undergoing rapid technological transformation. An analysis of 76 million job postings documents that need: Eight of the 10 most in-demand skills are durable, such as communication, collaboration and critical thinking.
Durable skills at the core
So what can we do to support wider integration of durable skills in education?
As students move through the K12 system, the more they focus on content mastery and test performance. However, some schools are showing how durable skills can be embedded as part of the academic core in more lasting ways:
- At Gibson Ek High School in Washington, students spend part of their time in internships and personalized projects that develop academic and professional competencies.
- Bostonia Global High School in California shows how schools can integrate traditional academic requirements with less-traditional learning approaches, such as competency-based projects and dashboards.
- In Missouri, the GO CAPS Monett high school program fosters partnerships with local industries to give students professional experiences that reinforce collaboration, critical thinking and creativity.
These programs are diverse in geography and structure, but they share one thing in common: they treat durable skills as part of the core, not the periphery. When taught appropriately, research indicates that durable skills development can support student development and learning.
For example, one study on teaching critical thinking and problem-solving to 10th-grade students found improvements in academic performance across subject areas. Student collaboration contributed to higher math and science achievement, according to a report by the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment
Scaling what already works
Another area where we see promise is in wider statewide integration through the incorporation of durable skills as part of “portraits of a graduate.”
States like North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Indiana are developing graduate profiles that explicitly include durable skills, and other states are incorporating elements of these skills without using the umbrella term.
These frameworks offer a way for communities to define graduate readiness and align instruction and assessment accordingly, allowing more K12 leaders to deploy these measures.
Other opportunities for increased durable skill integration:
- Support educator professional learning. Teachers need quality tools, not just mandates. This may mean closer integration with universities and organizations to develop professional learning courses that support the integration of durable skills frameworks for educators at all stages of their career development.
- Systemic approaches to measurement. If we only test what’s easy to measure, we’ll miss what matters most. This may mean collaborating with school systems to pilot new ways to assess and document durable skills, from competency-based rubrics to digital portfolios.
What learning should mean
Our education systems have continuously evolved to adapt academic standards to societal needs. What if the next phase of our evolution is a re-centering of human-focused standards, such as: leadership, character, collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking, metacognition, mindfulness, growth mindset and fortitude.
This isn’t just a workforce issue, it’s an education one, too. In a time when large language models never rest, it’s more important than ever to prepare students so that they are not just answering the questions, but guiding the questions.
School systems have a powerful opportunity to make that real by helping students develop the durable skills that will shape and create a future for us all.
