Experts Begin to Identify Nonacademic Skills Key to Success

Kevin Stonewall, the director of alumni affairs at North Lawndale College Preparatory High School in Chicago, talks with recent alumni who have returned to the school over the winter break from college. Stonewall follows its graduates through their first year of college, keeping tabs on them through online social networking, transcript requests, direct contacts, and connections to area colleges. In the process, the school is able to direct students to support services and get feedback from students on how well it prepared them for college.

—John Zich for Education Week

By Sarah D. Sparks

Washington

As federal pressure intensifies to ensure students graduate ready for college and careers, researchers are beginning to go beyond identifying the subject-matter classes students need to succeed after high school and home in on the cognitive and noncognitive skills that also contribute to success.

College and career readiness has become a hot political topic for education under the Obama administration. The president has set a national goal to have the highest proportion of college-educated adults in the world by 2020, and it’s one of the four guiding goals of the economic-stimulus package’s education grants.

Yet at the same time, research shows an average of two out of five traditional college students and more than half of nontraditional ones will take at least one remedial class, and higher education administrators report incoming students frequently are not equipped to cope with the greater academic, financial, and social responsibilities...