The Skills We Say We Value — and How Rarely We Actually Teach Them

Life is complicated, unpredictable, and sometimes messy — beautiful too, if you slow down enough to notice. Navigating that mess without a script is a skill in itself. I’ve spent decades asking some version of the same question: Are students gaining the skills and habits they’ll need to thrive independently—to pursue purposeful careers, to contribute to society? Life will demand certain skills from these students. Are those the ones they’re actually learning in school?

Our new research with Gallup set out to get a real answer, at least to a piece of that question.

We surveyed 830 Iowa students in grades 5–12 last fall, asking how they’re learning: whether they set goals, ask for feedback, and feel like they have any real say in their own education. We wanted to understand the distance between what we tell students matters and what we actually give them the chance to practice.

It turns out, the distance is significant.

The Behaviors We Praise But Rarely Build

Ask any group of educators what they want for their students, and you’ll hear some version of the same list: confidence, initiative, ability to collaborate and problem-solve, resilience when things get hard.  We want young people to leave school as continuous learners, able to handle new situations and purposefully shape their own futures. That only happens with practice.

Many students report persisting through challenges, though fewer report seeking feedback or setting goals for improvement. 72% of students say they try different strategies when they are stuck on something, while fewer report setting goals for improvement (53%) or asking for feedback (52%).

So I was struck by how few students report regularly practicing the specific behaviors that build toward that: only about half set goals for their own improvement. About half ask for feedback. Fewer than four in ten create a plan for a major project on their own. Barely a third talk with anyone about what they might do differently to improve their work.

Meanwhile, 72% of students say they’ll try different strategies when they’re stuck. This tells me persistence isn’t the missing ingredient. Students aren’t giving up. They’re just not always being asked, or shown how, to direct that persistence with real structure: a goal, a plan, an outside perspective.

That’s not a student problem. It’s a design problem. And design problems are solvable.

What Surprised Me Most

What surprised me most was something buried deeper in the data: of everything we tested, the single strongest predictor of whether a student feels prepared for life after high school wasn’t pace, or choice, or even goal-setting. It was how a student perceives their own grades, regardless of what those grades actually are.

That’s a strange thing to be the strongest predictor. Two students can earn the exact same grade in the exact same class and walk away believing completely different things about their own capability. One might read the grade as proof of growth. The other could read it as a ceiling. That belief — more than the grade itself — seems to shape how ready they feel for everything that comes after graduation.

So the job in front of us isn’t only about designing better assignments or giving more choice, although those matter. It’s about the story we help a student build around their own progress and capabilities, and making sure it’s one they can actually believe in.

What We’re Doing About It

This is, honestly, the work I get up for every day. At Opportunity Education, we build tools and frameworks designed around exactly this gap — supporting schools in prioritizing student ownership and supporting teachers in creating daily structures for goal-setting, feedback, and reflection that don’t require an extra hour in an already packed day. Not because ownership is a nice bonus, but because the data keeps telling us it’s foundational. Student agency and ownership are just as critical as academics. 

This isn’t a call for more programs or more curriculum. It’s a call for more practice — the unglamorous, repeated kind. Setting a goal isn’t a unit you teach once. It’s a rep you build, the same way a coach builds a jump shot: badly at first, then a little less badly, then eventually without thinking about it.

If there’s one thing I’d want a teacher or principal to take from this research, it’s this: the gap here isn’t motivation. Most students are already willing to keep trying when something is hard. What’s missing is the structure to do it well — a goal, a plan, someone to talk it through with. That’s a fixable gap. It just takes us building ownership deliberately, not assuming it shows up on its own.

If you want to dig into the full findings from our report with Gallup, they’re available here.