Rethinking employability skills in K–12 education is vital for preparing students for the future. The work of Vernier Science Education, which recently partnered with Marzano Research for a webinar on the topic, is deeply intertwined with the question of what skills students need to succeed in tomorrow’s workforce.
The webinar, “Beyond the Buzzword: Making Employability Skills Central to K–12 Learning,” discussed new research highlighting the importance of cultivating students’ employability skills. Marzano Research reviewed over 22,000 resources, including labor market data and research studies, to help modernize the national Employability Skills Framework.
Researchers identified eight core skills that employers consistently prioritize: adaptability & continuous learning, problem-solving & critical thinking, professionalism & self-management, and technology & information fluency. Employers want greater adaptability, more applied real-world experience, and stronger problem-solving skills.
Employability Skills Development
Skill development needs to start early. Foundational habits like collaboration, self-regulation, and digital literacy can and should be introduced from elementary school onward. By secondary school, the focus shifts to applying those skills through CTE pathways, work-based learning, and real-world contexts that mirror what employers actually expect.
Trudy Cherasaro of Marzano Research said, “Employability skills must be intentionally developed throughout the education experience and connected to real-world context.”
The US Department of Education’s Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education emphasizes the importance of employability skills in preparing students for the future workforce. Employers are looking for students who can apply their skills in real-world contexts, rather than just possessing technical knowledge.
The Evolving Role of Technology
Core employability skills haven’t changed dramatically, but how students need to apply them has. AI is reshaping what employability skills look like in practice, with district leaders discussing the evolving role of technology in shaping how employability skills are developed and demonstrated.
Kian Zare, college, career, and military readiness coordinator for Houston ISD, emphasized that effectively communicating with AI tools is becoming its own core skill, one that draws on the same competency as communicating with people.
Making Skills Visible
A simple instructional framework that administrators can implement and support in their schools is the experience, reflect, and apply cycle. This cycle pushes beyond simply creating experiences, asking students to think about what they just experienced and build self-awareness.
By combining this cycle with rubrics, observation, peer assessment, and portfolios, district leaders can extend employability skills beyond CTE classrooms and make them visible and measurable across their schools. This approach also helps to create a shared language for employability skills across grade levels.
Collaborative Commitment
Every panelist emphasized that employability skills cannot live in a single program, department, or grade level. They require intentional, consistent development across all content areas and all grade levels. This can include play-, project-, or work-based opportunities that help students develop skills such as math study and critical thinking.
Carolina Cano, assistant director of CTE for Portland Public Schools, said, “It shouldn’t just be a CTE thing. It shouldn’t be siloed. It should be across all content, and as early as pre–K.” This requires a fundamental shift in how districts think about instruction, with administrators and instructional leaders playing a key role in making that shift happen.
Establishing a shared language for employability skills, highlighting strong examples of skill-building, and encouraging teachers to embed skill reflection into student-led conferences or portfolios can support the development of employability skills across schools. This can help prepare students for future success in the workforce.
Creating a system that supports the development of these skills, rather than just adding them as an afterthought, is key. By doing so, schools can ensure that students are well-prepared for the challenges of the future workforce and can adapt to new technologies and changing employer expectations, such as those influenced by teacher stress levels and digital education.
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