Over the last several years there has been a great deal of work focused on answering the question "What does it mean to be College, Career, and Life Ready?" This is a question that is an essential foundation for focusing our work toward creating a system that supports meaningful work in making our vision a reality for students.
So we have a common base of knowledge and information for this part of the discussion I have provided several documents for your consideration.
The Washington State Board of Education has implemented graduation requirements that were phased in the beginning with the class of 2016 and will be fully implemented with the class of 2019. These new requirements were very intentionally focused on creating a required and rigorous set of pathways that will ensure students have the opportunity for preparation. For your review, a 2014 overview of the "career and college ready graduation requirements" is included.
The State of Washington has aligned much of their work with an independent, non-partisan, non-profit organization— Achieve. They have been influential in the work of many states. They have a single page document titled "What is College and Career Readiness?" Achieve identifies three key themes that college and career ready graduates should possess:
The Partnership for 21st Century Learning published a report about ten years ago titled: "Are They Really Ready To Work?". This report looked at employers' perspectives on worker preparation. The brief "Key Findings" document is an excellent summary. This report found that the five most important skills that employees must possess are: 1) Professionalism, 2) Teamwork, 3) Oral Communication, 4) Ethics and Social Responsibility, and 5) Reading Comprehension. More recently they published a framework for 21st century learning.
Redefining Ready, a workgroup of the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) has focused on defining College, Career, and Life readiness. They have developed templates of a Report Card and Data Dashboard that are potentially very good tools for reporting and tracking indicators.