Districts have named the skills that matter. What has been harder to build is the structure underneath those words: what collaboration looks like in third grade, how a teacher recognizes it when it happens, and what growth looks like by senior year. The Human Skills Framework was built to be that structure.
Most human skills frameworks were built to align a community around shared language, and they do that well. Building one that can also carry measurement takes a different specification.
Four things have to be true:
The Human Skills Framework was designed against all four. That is what lets one structure carry assessment, curriculum, and district reporting without anyone translating between them.
One skill, all the way down
The framework holds twelve skills. What follows is one of them, taken down every layer of the structure to a single observable behavior in a second-grade classroom. Every skill is built with this same depth.
Communication is expressing ideas so others can receive them, listening in ways that produce understanding, and adapting what you say to serve the person and purpose in front of you.
Every definition in the framework describes something a student does, which is what keeps the framework from scoring temperament. A student who thinks before speaking and a student who thinks by speaking can both demonstrate communication, and the definition has to be written so that both are visible.
Communication breaks into four strands, each one observable on its own.
Breaking the skill apart is what makes it teachable. Telling a student to work on their communication gives them nothing to work on. Strands also surface what a single label hides: the student who speaks brilliantly and cannot listen, the student who listens deeply and cannot get a word out. Those two students need different instruction, and one communication score would treat them the same.
Each strand is mapped across K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12. Every level is written as a learning progression rather than a fixed target, because a second grader and a tenth grader are demonstrating the same strand at different points in their development.
A teacher planning for third grade can see what came before and what comes next. Growth becomes measurable because the framework says in advance what growth looks like.
At the Foundational level, Expression shows up in specific behaviors a teacher can watch for.
What to look for
What to watch for
This is where an invisible skill becomes a visible one. A teacher who knows only what proficiency looks like can spot the students who have arrived. A teacher who also knows what struggle looks like can tell a student exactly what to do differently tomorrow.
The Human Skills Framework came out of a deliberate process: start from where the field already agrees, narrow by two explicit criteria, anchor every progression in learning science, and write every observable so a teacher can recognize it. It was written by Dr. Michelle Ament, ProSolve's Chief Academic Officer, drawing on her years as a classroom educator and district administrator.
The framework starts where the field already agrees. More than a dozen major frameworks across K-12 education, workforce development, and educational policy were analyzed for overlap, among them CASEL, the OECD Learning Compass 2030, the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs research, America Succeeds' Durable Skills taxonomy, and NACE's career readiness competencies. When skills keep showing up across sources built separately, by people with different priorities, the field has already told you something.
Every progression is built on established research. Backward design sets the destination first, so each level describes movement toward the graduation anchor rather than a fixed target. Vygotsky's zone of proximal development sets the distance between levels, keeping each step reachable with instruction. Cognitive load research sets the grain size. Developmentally appropriate practice governs what is fair to expect at each stage, which is what makes four grade bands the right number rather than an arbitrary one.
Every observable had to survive one test. Could a teacher watch a student and recognize the behavior in the moment? That rules out evaluative language like "communicates well" and requires a description of what a student actually does. Definitions, strands, and observables were refined through ongoing conversation with classroom educators, district administrators, and experts working on human skills development.
The framework's case rests on how it is built: observable behavior, pieces that can be scored on their own, progressions anchored to development. The technical evidence in human skills assessment comes from putting instruments in the field, and that work is underway with districts using the HUB. A framework that overstates its evidence has no standing to ask districts to trust the evidence it produces.
A framework built this way becomes the guide for measuring, reporting and improving human skills. The same behaviors a teacher plans toward are the behaviors an assessment scores and the behaviors a district reports on, which is how a skill stays visible from a lesson to a board meeting.
Every score produced traces back to a strand, a grade-band progression, and a named observable. There is no separate assessment vocabulary, so a score points directly at the student's strengths and opportunities for growth suggesting what a teacher would do next.
Lessons, experiences, and programs are built against those same strands and progressions. A teacher working on Expression in a third-grade classroom is working toward the same behaviors an assessment would look for, what gets taught and what gets measured trace to the same strand.
The framework crosswalks to the language districts already use, including CASEL's five competencies, the 4Cs, College and Career Readiness indicators, and Portrait of a Learner profiles. Districts keep their own language and gain grade-level indicators underneath it.
Twelve skills, forty-eight strands, and the observable behaviors at every grade band. The guide lays out the whole structure, along with the research base behind it.