Across K–12 and postsecondary education, there is growing agreement that students need more than academic knowledge to succeed. Durable skills such as collaboration, communication, and critical thinking are increasingly highlighted in state Portraits of a Graduate (PoG) frameworks, workforce expectations, and institutional learning goals. Yet the education field continues to wrestle with a central challenge: turning these broad competencies into clear, actionable and meaningful evidence of student growth, workforce readiness, and instructional strategies.

The Skills for the Future (SFF) initiative was launched to address this challenge. In partnership with states and education systems, SFF develops research-based tools that connect vision to classroom practice. One of these tools is a set of Skills Progressions that provide a shared language for understanding how durable skills develop over time and how educators can support that growth through instruction and assessment.

Learning Progressions (LPs) are central to SFF’s approach to assessment design and instructional decision-making. Rather than treating skills as fixed traits, LPs describe how skills develop over time, helping educators:

• identify where students currently are in their skill development;
• clarify where they are heading as learning goals; and
• support timely, actionable feedback and teaching strategies that support growth.

In this way, LPs serve as a shared structure for designing tasks, interpreting evidence, and supporting continued growth in durable skills.

The SFF team has developed LPs for Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking, the durable skills most consistently prioritized across states and by employers. Each progression is organized around subskills, with skill indicators serving as the unit of progress. By using multiple indicators rather than a single prescribed pathway, the progressions recognize that:

• students may demonstrate skills in different ways;
• growth often occurs unevenly across subskills;
• development is iterative, not strictly linear; and
• no single pathway is privileged as the “correct” route to mastery.

These Progressions represent a comprehensive, flexible framework for understanding how students build and demonstrate essential skills across contexts.

The SFF LPs were informed by multiple rounds of interdisciplinary reviews. Contributors included:

• skills researchers and assessment designers;
• K–12 and postsecondary educators;
• workforce partners; and
• experts in cultural responsiveness, multilingual learning, and accessibility.

This collaborative, evidence‑driven process helped ensure that the Skills Progressions are theoretically grounded, instructionally relevant, and usable across diverse environments.

The public release of the SFF Progressions marks an important step toward making durable skills more measurable, teachable, and actionable. They also support greater coherence across systems by:

• offering clear descriptions of how essential skills grow;
• grounding instruction in research‑based developmental pathways;
• informing assessments that capture meaningful evidence of progress; and
• supporting policies that value both academic and durable skills

As states and schools rethink what it means to prepare students for an evolving future, the Progressions offer a practical foundation for aligning classroom practice, assessment systems, and policy decisions around the skills that matter most.

The Skills Progressions are designed as flexible, practical tools for educators, systems leaders, and policymakers. They are intended to support a wide range of uses, including:

1. Strengthening Classroom Instruction
   Teachers can use subskill indicators to plan lessons, differentiate instruction, and design learning activities that intentionally support skill growth.
2. Supporting Assessment Design and Interpretation
   The Progressions can inform the design of performance tasks, guide rubric development, and help educators interpret student work with greater clarity and coherence.
3. Enhancing Feedback and Reflection
   A shared developmental language enables more actionable feedback, helping students understand their current strengths, set meaningful goals, and reflect on their performance.
4. Guiding System and Policy Design
   States and districts can use the progressions to align curricula, assessments, graduation pathways, and educator professional learning around clearly defined skill development.
5. Creating Bridges to Postsecondary and Workforce Settings
   Shared definitions of skills help K-12 schools, employers, and higher education institutions speak the same language about readiness and capability.

It is equally important to clarify what these Progressions are not. They are designed to support growth and coherence—not to dictate rigid expectations.

1. Not a Checklist or Compliance Tool
   They do not require students to demonstrate skills in a fixed order or through specific behaviors.
2. Not a Script for Instruction
   They do not prescribe curricula, lesson plans, or instructional methods.
3. Not an Assessment Rubric
   While they inform assessment design and interpretation, the progressions are too comprehensive to function as scoring tools without thoughtful translation.
4. Not Limited to Classroom Settings
   Skill development and expression in out of school settings, including workplaces, homes, extracurricular activities, and communities are equally valued.
5. Not a Replacement for Academic Standards
   The progressions complement—not replace—disciplinary content standards and learning goals.
6. Not Static or Final
   The Progressions will continue to evolve through empirical validation research and practical use.

Explore the Skills for the Future Skills Progressions here: https://www.ets.org/skills-for-future.html