I recently learned about the Progressive States Network.
I hear their general belief is that state policymakers often have
little experience with issue areas they are working on, so corporate
lobbyists can often come in and serve as a veritable “brain,” pushing
legislators to implement policies that favor big business. PSN was
created to counteract the corporate voice and create policy solutions
that better serve the public interest.

I mentioned the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) in my last posting.
Today, I want to go into greater detail about the group’s work — and
point to a place where we desperately need some serious PSN help. Like,
right now.

P21, founded in 2002, calls itself “the leading advocacy
organization focused on infusing 21st century skills into education.”
It is the only group today that regularly lobbies state legislators to
make changes in curriculum and assessment to address “21st century
skills” development. This expression, “21st century skills,” summarizes
the group’s general message — and, in itself, it sounds pretty
admirable. Indeed, students do need to develop their skills to cope in
the modern world, and most people would agree on the general principle
that education in the United States today remains quite backward and
resistant to change. P21’s push to promote technology and media
literacy, in this context, feels like a breath of fresh air.

But there are two issues to consider here. First, while P21 supports
the development of young people’s technology skills for success in
their career, as I discuss below, it neglects to nurture their critical
thinking about the world in which they live. Second, and more
important, suspicions understandably arise when like 30 large media and technology companies come together to push for the integration of technology (i.e., their products) into classroom education.

P21 has targeted several different areas within education. In its
first two years of existence, it developed its “six key elements of
21st century learning,” published in the 2003 report Learning for the 21st Century.
At the time, it collaborated with numerous, mostly business-friendly
information, media, and technology organizations, such as the Alliance
for a Media Literate America, the Center for Media Literacy, the Aspen
Institute (which held a well-known media literacy conference in 1992),
the Cato Institute, and others. It defined as its main goal the
promotion of education with an emphasis on using modern communication
and technology tools to aid learning. In the 2003 report, P12 placed
itself in an amicable, non-threatening position, supporting the use of
core subjects (i.e. not aiming to reform existing educational
structures drastically), applauding the passage of No Child Left Behind
as an “excellent start,” and assuring educators that its methods do not
introduce additional burdens on an already tightly-packed curriculum.
The group was here to help.

In 2005, P21 published its second major report, introducing a new focus on assessment. In Assessment of 21st Century Skills,
P21 reviewed existing assessments in five issue areas that it created
(global awareness; civic literacy; financial, economic, and business
literacy; learning skills; and ICT literacy); it promoted the
development of more rigorous assessment tools in these five areas; and
it listed key organizations that work on issues relating to the five
areas.

The important point here is that P21 defines these issue areas in a
specific way, and critical media literacy doesn’t actually belong
within any of its five categories. You’d think it would belong in ICT
literacy — but that’s more focused on technological education. Then
you’d think it may belong in learning skills — but that’s more about
communicating and problem solving. And the other three topics are way
off. So critical media literacy kind of gets lost in the shuffle, and
awareness about the structures of media system that is the conduit of
information delivery, conveniently, doesn’t get mentioned in any of
these issue areas. Turns out P21 doesn’t think this kind of knowledge
is part of necessary 21st century skills, and doesn’t believe it needs
to be assessed. (Wonder why?)

In the 2005 report, P21 states its long-term goal: “Challenge every
state to adopt a system that assesses the full range of 21st century
skills and 21st century content knowledge by 2010″ (p. 11).

The group is very much on track.

Today, six states have “joined” the Partnership by adopting its
curriculum and assessment materials and education policy
recommendations. In chronological order of membership, these states are:

1. North Carolina
2. West Virginia
3. Wisconsin
4. Massachusetts
5. South Dakota
6. Maine

Ken Kay, P21 president, says he expects to have as much as five more state partners by this summer.

Today, education departments in some of these states have
incorporated P21 rhetoric to a degree that is almost eerie. In 2007,
for instance, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and West Virginia all patted
their own backs for receiving the Partnership for 21st Century Skills’ Practice of the Year award — when only those three states were partnering with P21!… And let’s not forget about North Carolina Governor Mike Easley’s Center for 21st Century Skills, located in the North Carolina Business Committee for Education. Yikes.

Progressive counter-voices, help us!