Cross-Cutting Capabilities

The nature of work is changing. Jobs that require routine, rule-based action free of complex problem solving, critical thinking, or collaboration are rapidly being replaced by technology (Manyika et al., 2011). In 1970, more than half of US jobs were in blue-collar or clerical work. By 2004, that number had dropped to less than 40% (Levy & Murnane, 2004). The proportion of these jobs in the US economy has decreased further over the past decade, and the jobs that do exist have low or even negative wage growth. In 1979, the average 30-year-old with a bachelor’s degree earned just 17% more than a 30-year-old with a high school diploma. By 2004, this gap had increased to 50% (Levy & Murnane, 2004), and today it is well over 80% (Carnevale, Strohl, & Melton, 2014). The median earnings of working men aged 30 to 45 without a high school diploma fell 20% from 1990 to 2013 when adjusted for inflation, and the corresponding earnings of working women fell 12%. Individuals  without degrees are also now less likely to work in operations and labor jobs that have average  annual salaries of $25,500 and more likely to work in food, cleaning, and groundskeeping jobs that  have average annual salaries of $20,400 (Kearney, Hershbein, & Jacome, 2015). Conversely, jobs that involve complex thinking and the ability to communicate such thinking in a variety of formats have seen substantial growth in openings as well as wages (Autor, Levy, & Murnane, 2003). As our reliance on technology increases and jobs become more specialized, the gap between jobs that require both routine and high-level cognitive skills and those that are only routine will continue to grow (David, Katz, & Kearney, 2006).

Because these skills are integral to entry and success in desirable jobs, they should and must be developed during the course of a student’s academic career. Consider how a problem in mathematics might be solved in an organizational setting as opposed to a typical academic setting.  In the classroom setting, the student solves for x given a series of statements about how x relates to y. In a workplace setting, an employee must find ways of cutting costs for a regular series of shipments. In the academic setting, students can often get through a course or pass a test simply by matching known procedures to easily recognizable questions because the setting provides a high degree of scaffolding and prompting. Textbooks and test questions pose problems in highly standardized formats. Unsurprisingly, research shows that students often fail to transfer what they have learned in an academic setting to practical or workplace settings (Pellegrino & Hilton, 2013).

In the workplace setting, by contrast, the employee may be given little guidance as to how to proceed. Rather than being presented as a mathematics problem, the demand to cut costs is presented simply as a task that must be accomplished. The employee must decide to research potential methods, develop a spreadsheet, and evaluate solutions to find the best one, and then communicate his or her findings and justify his or her methods in a manner that is understandable to a variety of audiences. This is not a particularly unusual or advanced application, yet it is very different from what we demand of students on current assessments. Academic skills such as locating and reading sources, performing mathematical calculations, and writing explanations are heavily involved in the process, but accomplishing the task requires combining them with many different behavioral, social, technology, and problem-solving skills.

As discussed in the previous section, core academic skills are a central component of education and work readiness and have often been the exclusive focus of large-scale assessment and educational accountability. However, as just illustrated, core academic skills are necessary but insufficient (Pellegrino & Hilton, 2012). Data from workforce surveys document the demand and need for a broader range of cognitive skills to adequately prepare students and adults for high-demand jobs.  For example, a survey of 431 US employers reported that teamwork and critical thinking were rated “very important” more often than were traditional academic areas such as writing, mathematics, and science (Casner-Lotto & Barrington, 2006). Teamwork, critical thinking, and skills related to information and technology enhance the ability to transfer and apply knowledge in a variety of settings. We refer to these skills as cross-cutting capabilities (CCCs) because they enhance learning and application in most, if not all, disciplines and careers.

The ACT CCC framework described below addresses this gap with the inclusion of skills like the  ability to think critically, work with others to solve problems, use effective study strategies, and  use technology to research, transform, and share information. These capabilities are important for success but are rarely given the attention they deserve, particularly when it comes to assessment and grading. The problem occurs at least in part because they are not associated with a specific academic subject and often suffer from a lack of clear articulation. Educators and employers have increasingly cited the importance of such CCCs, and there have been attempts to incorporate some CCCs within core academic content standards. However, there is little evidence that most teachers foster such skills well or that all students are at the same developmental level on such skills when they are prescribed at specific grade levels, as they are in the Common Core State Standards. More often, these skills are implicitly assumed to be incorporated into formal education but are rarely the explicit focus of assessment.

Given this lack of attention, it is perhaps unsurprising that CCCs are consistently identified as an area of weakness for current graduates. For example, 52% of executives identified their employees’ inadequate problem-solving skills as a serious skills deficiency, whereas only 30% cited inadequate mathematics skills (Deloitte & The Manufacturing Institute, 2011). In another survey,  an overwhelming majority of employers indicated that colleges should place more emphasis on  written and oral communication (89%), critical thinking (81%), complex problem solving (75%),  and teamwork (71%; Hart Research Associates, 2010). Even among college instructors, critical thinking and problem-solving skills were rated as extremely important (ACT, 2013a). Within academic domains, professors indicated knowledge and skills in their academic area were most important for success in their course (e.g., mathematics professors rated mathematics skills as most important for success in mathematics courses); however, when the survey responses were analyzed across academic domains (i.e., mathematics, science, reading, writing), critical thinking and problem-solving skills were rated as most important overall.