To graduate, skills need to be hard and soft.

I quickly downloaded this from the Education Week website before their “free time” expired. It’s a state by state comparison of what it takes to graduate from high school these days. Of course, when you scroll down to Washington State, it lists that the exam (though it doesn’t specify reading and writing) will kick-in in 2008.

And here, according to this opinion piece, again in Ed Week, is the goal of these tests: to make sure the student can gain a toehold in a career or college after high school. Now many of the state tests don’t test for college proficiency, or some of the tests you must pass to get into the trades for that matter. But they do give the student an idea of if they are headed in that direction.

And aside from the hard skills, (like can you pass Algebra 2?) this article talks about how companies are also looking for student, future employees, that can work as a team and brainstorm the next Google or Coin Star machine.