Stephanie Krauss on Readiness, Opportunity, and The Right to a Decent Life

You’re listening to the Getting Smart podcast, where we unpack what is new and innovative in education. I’m your host, Jessica, and this week we’re talking with Stephanie Cross about her new book, Making It, What Today’s Kids Need for Tomorrow’s World. Stephanie is an educator, social worker, researcher, and writer.

Her work focuses on what young people need in the first quarter of life in order for them to thrive and be ready for adulthood. Stephanie is also a senior advisor to JFF and a staff consultant for the Youth Transition Funders Group. Let’s listen in as she talks with Tom about the new checklist for young adults, science,

and a new set of currencies. Hey, Stephanie Cross, welcome to the Getting Smart podcast. Thanks, Tom. Super excited to be here. And I have to tell you that, you know, when we were prepping for the show, I didn’t say

this, but this is my first podcast with a special microphone. My brother is, he worked for Radio for a long time, and so he convinced me to spend some money since I won’t be traveling to anywhere for some time to try out the mic. So you’ll have to tell me how it goes. Oh, it sounds good.

It looks like you’re paying attention to the lighting, so you’re getting this video podcast thing down. Stephanie, I’m trying. After teaching, you went back to school for masters and social work. What prompted that?

That’s a great question, and it was a hard decision to make back when I did. So to bring you back now almost two decades ago, I was a teacher in Phoenix, Arizona, and I had the really fortunate opportunity to go to Arizona State as a night student and get a master’s in education while I was teaching. And so I thought, you know, one graduate degree should be enough.

And as a teacher, I was teaching fifth grade. I was just really conflicted because I loved teaching. I think I was good at it, and my kids enjoyed being in my classroom, but I kept bumping up against these really happy life issues that they were facing. I was a student whose house burnt down and they had no insurance.

I had another student whose mom was a single mom, and she was a bus driver for the district and working at Walmart, and they still weren’t able to make it, even though she was working as many hours as she could stay awake. And it really impacted me as I realized that there were so many issues pressing on the lives of these kids and their families, and I didn’t know where to send them.

I didn’t know what was contributing to that. And so I tried to figure out who does, what is the profession that understands sort of the social and economic realities for kids. And it was social workers. And as soon as I kind of read what is a social worker and who do they care about and what

are the issues that they care about? It was a bit of a homecoming. So once I figured out that there was a way to bring together youth development and education, social work and education, it was a no-brainer that there was more school ahead of me. Stephanie, I’ve heard you say that readiness is a right, ensuring that kids have a decent

life and prepared for the realities of what comes next. Where do you think that insight came from, this idea that readiness is a right? Is that a wash you insight or later? I am one of five kids and I grew up in a place that was well resourced in New Jersey. Our family was not.

We experienced really intense inequality within the town. And at the time, we all thought we were poor, my brothers and I, and really struggling and after years now, I realized if you had put me in a number of other cities or communities, we wouldn’t be as poor as it felt in this well resourced community. And so my older brother and I, you know, so they’re four boys and then me and then the

second, my older brother and I both dropped out of school. He dropped out without a GED and then went on and I ended up getting my GED. And then we go all the way from drop out, no GED to high school, Val of Victorian, Harvard. And each of us somehow entered into adulthood with enough stuff, enough knowledge or connections or resources to make it and to know what would happen.

So to answer your question, I think that this idea of readiness being a fundamental human right starts with my story. But then as I went into teaching and as I traveled and met so many young people, I became stewards of their stories too. And I saw the ways in which the ability to just get the basics and how hard it is to

do that when you are struggling with poverty or when you are struggling because you have challenges that are really out of your control. It really textured this idea. It all came to a head for me in and I think that you’ll appreciate this thinking back to your days at Gates and even the multiple pathways work that we were both a part of

years ago. I was running a high school years later in St. Louis and realized that in so many ways completing school or completing a degree, completion was a proxy for readiness. It wasn’t the same thing. Somehow in my own experience, I was able to not graduate and be ready.

And yet I was giving diplomas to kids who believed that that was a ticket and that they had everything that they needed. And they didn’t. It was a real moral conflict. And so I would say the idea initiated as a kid with my own experience.

It sort of built and grew even in that transition from education to social work and why I had to leave the classroom. But it really came to a head in crisis in standing up on the stage and giving kids diplomas and seeing them tear streaming down their faces, believing that they were ready because they had completed and that I actually didn’t believe that they had everything that they

would need. And so I’ve been obsessing over that question ever since. That was actually my transition from local front line work, international work was really in pursuit of this question of, well, what does it really take to be ready? If it’s not completing a degree, what does that require?

And how do we make sure every kid gets that chance? Does that make sense? It’s a super important insight. I remember in 2000 at the Gates Foundation developing this all kids college ready agenda. And that’s important but insufficient, right?

The idea of being college eligible is an important life step. And we, I think we 20 years ago thought of it more as a proxy for readiness, but I appreciate the thick hole learner insights that it’s a weak proxy for readiness. That’s a great segue to your new book, making it what today’s kids need for tomorrow’s world. Stephanie, I really, I appreciate your instincts, your insights on the need for, quote, a better

road map to navigate the world as it is and a country that is still unfair and unjust. Your book for me really does a nice job of capturing the complexity of what is required for readiness and the current injustice that exists in so many ways across so many systems. So is that a fair summary that it really tries to unpack the complexity and explain the injustice? Yeah, I think that you have said it better than I could.

I have been in national work now for as long as my little one’s been alive. So going on eight years and I wrote this book as a love letter back to the front lines. I think you’ll be able to appreciate this really well, you know, again, thinking back to shared experiences. So I know that you were in leadership in Washington for a long time before national work.

And it’s so busy on the front lines. And so we sit as folks in national positions now in all of these conversations, all of these rich discussions, hearing about how the science is evolving and what’s happening and hearing from leaders, including young people all across the country and having a really crisp idea of what injustice is looking like in real time in these different places and in these

different systems and contexts. And when you’re in it, it’s really full and isolating and lonely and hard to parse out what is something happening because it’s the way that it is. What control do I have over this particularly difficult policy decision or practice decision? And so what I was seeing in terms of, as you mentioned, sort of speaking to the world as it is and the world as it should be, is that there was a need to tend to the surviving

readiness piece of the world as we are working together on the thriving, flourishing part of the opportunity. And what I mean by that is I saw a need, particularly in the last few years, as I’ve been in more conversations on what you might call the demand side, thinking about the workforce, thinking about higher education, to reflect back, hey, we feel that the world is changing. We can experience it with our kids or our grandkids. We can experience it in our communities.

And it really is changing in really intense ways and the fracturing is getting worse. And we see the way in which racism and justice continues to grow. And it’s probably going to be that way for a while. And so for kids right now, what is the survival solution? What is the path to make sure that they understand how the game is played? What folks are looking for in terms of future opportunities, whether that’s going to college, getting a job, getting an interview,

making enough money. So that that decent life is guaranteed. And once they understand those rules or concurrent, let’s work with them in the creation of a good life. And so making it is meant to be a starter as a book. It’s meant to really educate and equip folks on those realities and anchor them in who are these kids? How is the world changing? How is that all going to come to a head when they transition into adulthood? What do they need? How is that harder for kids who are kids of

color, kids who are poor, kids who are marginalized in other ways? What can we do about it? And from that base, I think is the extra charge that says, is it or that asks, is a decent life enough? And if it’s not, then what? Right? And hopefully that’ll be the second book. That’s the plan. Stephanie, your your first two chapters do a beautiful job of describing the ways that kids are different and that the world is different. I think you did that succinctly and thoughtfully.

But other people have done that as well. I think what your book really shines is in chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, you talk about the four C’s is a really new and interesting way to think about what kids need to be successful. That’s competencies, connections, credentials and cash. So I want to spend a few minutes on each of those. Could you headline competencies? What are the competencies, particularly the new ones that weren’t on our list 10 or 20 years ago that are key?

Yeah, so excited to jump in there. Let me reflect back. One thing that was really important that changed and challenged the way that I looked at the whole book because it’ll anchor what the competencies are and the rest. And that is this goes back to your college ready agenda. And for any of us who sort of started out in the reform space and have changed and evolved and matured over the years, we spend a lot of time with kids thinking about how do we get them ready for college and

careers. And then hopefully we send them off and it’s sort of a good handoff. I know you talked to my colleague Michelle Weiss not too long ago and she was thinking about this lengthening work life. So before jumping into the competencies and the other currencies, I think it’s important to anchor for folks who are listening or watching that one of the most provocative findings when I was doing this book research was that science has progressed so much in recent years that kids born today,

my kids, I think you’ve got a granddaughter who had fallen to this group, they should live to be a hundred. And this should change the way fundamentally we view what our role is as educators in the early years. If you’re going to live to be a hundred in order to be able to afford that, that means the possibility of having to work for 70 or 80 years or more. And also there’s volatility, there’s pandemics, there’s economic crises, there’s climate issues, right? These really

tough, complicated things. And so the goal then has to become how are we helping young people make it now but also get what they need to navigate what could be a very long life. And so the way that I’ve started to think about it is what do young people need in the first quarter in order for 100 year life to be possible? And what are those first quarter currencies, right, that they have to pick up for that? So now thinking about these currencies, these are things that can be earned

and spent out. And some kids are born with more of one or the other. In the case of competencies, as you might find from competency-based education, programs or schools or districts, the general idea is this is what you should know and be able to do. They’re pretty much internally facing. But the way that I think about this that might be a little bit different from how folks have thought about it before is I think about, so I list 10 competencies and some of them combined

in the book. They come out of a big project I did at the Forum for Youth Investment that was funded by the Ford Foundation, the Readiness Project. And we wanted to look at the science of kids and adolescents and how they develop and what they really need and how folks across all of these systems, from pediatricians to employers to teachers to scientists, think about development. And the way that I’ve come to think about it is you have your physical body systems. So I’ve got

my cardiovascular, right? I’ve got my brain, I’ve got these pieces, and they’re all interdependent. My heart is going to be impacted by my breathing. If I go out for a run, it’s going to connect with my brain, right? How I think I think you’re a runner. So you’ll get this. I’m a swimmer. All of those body parts are their own, and they’re also highly interdependent. And that’s your way of functioning. So I think about the competencies as the things that we don’t see, but there are ways of being

in doing in the world, and they’re totally interdependent. So how my physical health is is going to impact my ability to think creatively. In small ways, if I haven’t had enough to eat, I can’t really think creatively. To big ways, if I am chronically food insecure, I’m operating in scarcity. And my ability to go outside of a narrow view of what’s necessary is going to be really limited. So the book sort of details what those ways of being and doing are. And then the good news

is that they can all be developed and practiced over time, which is, I think, very good news. I’ll just point out, and hopefully we’ll get to talk about this a little bit later, the one that’s really new. I know you sort of were wondering, like, okay, what is different is thinking about not only physical health, but cognitive health. So the world is super overwhelming and stressful, and we’re really sort of suffering in the overload of all of the things, and all of the things at

once. And for our kids, it’s chronic. They’ve actually only known the world like this, and that likely will continue. And that is made worse in many ways by technology, when there aren’t supports in place to be able to unplug and plug back in at will. And so I would just elevate for anybody listening that I actually think cognitive fitness and cognitive health is something that we don’t talk about, we have to talk about, and that it’s actually crucially important as

we move forward. I love that. I will love the way that you integrate. You could think of it as mindfulness, but also fitness, nutrition. These are all habits that are super important to develop. Schools have a role, but again, this is part of the whole learner development approach that you describe that parents, guardians, friends can all contribute to mindfulness, to wellness, which brings me to the second currency, which is connections that you, I think, like Julia

Freeland Fisher, argue that your social network is really, really important, a critical asset. Say more about that and how we can help young people develop a social network in a healthy, productive way. Well, I think first, to the end of social network, Julia is a dear friend of mine, and so if folks are listening or watching and haven’t read who you know, they should. And she was definitely someone I consulted with for the whole chapter on connections. And for me, I think about

connections as a second currency in a couple of different ways. And what I’ll try to do with each of these currencies is just kind of flag some of the new aspects or fresh aspects that we haven’t been talking about as much as parents or grandparents, as educators, youth workers. So one piece that ties back to this changing world, which as you mentioned, I really go into detail in the first part, and if folks don’t have a good understanding of future of work or world challenges, I think that

gives a nice grounding, is that we cannot promise today’s kids economic stability or community stability. And yet, they want stability. And so in the absence of that, the white flag is that we may be able to offer them social stability. And if you think again about the prospect of this 100 year life, what we know about longevity, what we’re learning about folks in terms of the aging science is the thing that makes us alive and grounded in the world has to do with the quality

of our relationships. So that’s one. So hold that there for a second. So I call those kinds of relationships lifelines. And one of the things I really advocate for is the importance of these like lifers, they can be parents, they can be friends, they can be clergy, other faith leaders, they can. But these are the folks who just walk with you through life. And one of the difficulties I always had in my social work and teaching experience was folks would talk about the one

caring adult. Well, if a kid has one caring adult, they’re going to be okay. And I in fact, do have in my own story, the one counselor I can point to. And the book is dedicated to her and one other dear mentor and my kids and husband. And so I’ve got that person, but she was not the only person pouring into my life at the time. And so we have to unpack that. Otherwise, it’s not fair for kids. If we think, you know, if we get them the one person, there actually needs to be that

network of lifelines. But the other piece which Julia tends to so well, in her research and writing, is social capital. So the way that I would want folks listening to think about it is the currency of connections that young people are going to need in the future. One aspect of it is how are they socially healthy and anchored? And then the other part is social capital. How do we actually use who we know and how we know them as benefit? And so this is where injustice and

inequity start to really show up in the book. Because for many folks, they inherit social capital. They’re born into a network that pays out dividends. And so our understanding of just how crucial that is, particularly in areas where young people have fewer social connections that really yield those economic advancement opportunities, college, job interviews, other pieces, we have to design for that. So school leaders and youth program directors and administrators,

there is a need to get really educated on the role that social capital plays. It might actually, connections might actually be the most important currency. And then doing that deliberate design to build what I call navigational relationships, and then really these bridge building relationships. I love that chapter and appreciate it. Like you take a lot of inspiration from Julia’s work. The next currency is credentials, degrees and certificates. It strikes us that those are important

and growing and important, but with this proliferation of different kinds of degrees and credentials, young people need to be discerning about which ones to get. So what do you see happening there with credentials and how can young people and the people that care about them become more discerning consumers of which ones are important? So I think credentials and cash are a little bit more externalized. So cash is the next currency that we’ll talk about. But for credentials,

it’s pretty basic in terms of what I try to articulate in the book, which is in my experience of shifting from K-12 over to the adult space, what I learned and continue to learn is just the number of credentials has proliferated. And we’ve moved from go to college to this post-second dairy credentialing marketplace that’s chaotic and confusing. And so my encouragement in the book and what I sort of detail is instead of saying, where do I want to go to college? It’s a set of

questions about what do I need in the next few years and what can I afford and what is realistic and what opportunities will sort of springboard from that. And so this reorientation again go back to this idea of a 100-year life of it’s not what do I need forever, but what do I need next? And what makes the most sense for me now? And that now is not forever, now is for now. And really doing that appraisal is key. I’ll just say one other thing. We have moved into a place

where we have jumped literally hundreds of thousands in the increase in post-secondary credentials. And at this point, about half of them are not even provided by colleges and universities. And so for families and young people as consumers, they’ve got to know that. And so do their counselors and the other people advising them because that world has just changed so significantly. The last one’s obvious but ignored in almost every other treatment of readiness and that’s cash.

That’s really access to capital, both to pursue your education, but I would say also to even consider entrepreneurial activities. So I love the fact that you mentioned cash and the important source of inequity that the historical wealth gap presents in America. Yeah, I’ll just I’ll mention just a couple of things there, Tom. I’m really grateful to folks like the Economic Security Project and the researchers who wrote the financial diaries

and others and really grounding me in the importance of thinking about this. I feel shame in terms of the field of education that we don’t name just how important cash is enough or address even one of the things I talk about that folks might be interested in reading about is how expensive a public education actually can be. And that for a family living in poverty, the cost of a public education could be up to half of the wages that they bring in between fees

and back to school costs and other pieces. So that chapter and thinking about that currency, I think about it in three pieces. One is what do young people need to get by and how do you support their learning and development in times when there is poverty or economic crisis and scarcity? The really important part there is understanding that given where we are now and where we’re headed, most kids will experience economic crisis in their life. And so how do

you actually prepare kids for periods of being poor, which is different than how do you support young people in deep poverty? But that most kids will experience periods of cash scarcity. And we need to know what to do when that happens. The next is around getting by how do you afford the opportunities you need. I talk about the cost of the unpaid internship or other realities in society that are super inequitable but real. And then the next piece is around smoothing out. I

make a big call for school leaders across the country and state leaders to revamp financial aid, not just financial aid, but financial literacy and education that happens because our model of preparing kids for the financial realities is just so different. I’ll just say in closing on the currency piece, young people need all four of them but in different amounts depending on who they are and what they bring to the table. And some, for instance, some really affluent young people

are born with a lot of cash and a lot of connections. And we see that sometimes they’re able to make it very far in life without as much competence as we’d like to see and without great credentials, right? On the flip side, you have the people who are extremely talented who are able to, like my older brother, do it without a credential or without the cash and sort of make it into adulthood. So it’s very variable but it is a deep injustice if we as educators say, well, if you’re

just skilled enough or if you just get that degree, you’ll be okay because that’s actually not the way that the world works. And it’s not fair for us to have young people trust that that’s true when it isn’t. That’s super insightful and I you’re the first one that I know of that’s really presented that that combination. So I really appreciate that. The other thing that really made me smile about your book Stephanie is chapter seven. I just was smiling all the way through it.

I love, I love, it’s really a toolkit for being a currency builder and it’s all the different ways that each of us in all the different roles that we play can help young people develop the currencies. So you suggest taking a whole child or a whole person approach, building currencies into every experience possible, spending time being just inclusive, being an advocate. So you really detail specific ways that people in different roles can be a currency builder. We would love to

have you headline that for a couple different roles. Maybe we can do a teacher and a parent and maybe a community member and just talk about what it means to be a currency builder in each of those roles. I was talking to a friend the other day and he’s a professor who studies character and thriving and flourishing and he’s a positive psychology youth development guy and he said, you know, Steph is your book just like life is very hard and then it ends and I said no, no, it ends with

hey, even though life is really hard and it’s really hard and even harmful for some kids, there are there are immediate things that all of us can do even, even while it stays hard and broken. And I actually think this is the beauty of it all like young people are going to learn and grow and develop wherever they are and with whoever they’re with. There is nothing like this pandemic to showcase that my kids, I have two of them are here at home and the kids across the the woods are at

school and there are different reasons why mine are at home and theirs are at school, but we have seen that that place is permeable and the need for all of the educators, whether they are trained to be a teacher or not to have the knowledge and be equipped in the ways that they need. So this is the part that truly was for me like a love letter back to the front lines after so many years away, which is to say there are nudges that you can make toward the systems that your young people are in,

whether that’s education or foster care or the youth justice system, it doesn’t matter wherever young people the the systems and settings where they are spending time. And as you do that, there are things you can be doing right now. And so you mentioned sort of parents, teachers and community workers. I would say that across all three, the first thing is to feel empowered and emboldened that the things that actually matter the most are very much within the grasp of those adults to be

able to learn and cultivate and equip the young people in their lives with their powerful roles that folks can play. And so being able to get creative with the time that you have young people to focus on building those relationships or asking those hard questions or advocating for the direct cash assistance or support or doing the competency development is key and within grasp. I think the other thing the currency builder strategies are really clear on is they live

in the small day to day interactions. So when I’m thinking as a mom about what my kids are doing, yesterday school was so we’re recording this the day after the inauguration for folks who are tuning in school was watching history. It was living as learning and creating that memorable experience and unpacking all of the levels that that experience came with and doing it in a supportive way. If I was an educator being able to unpack all of those pieces as well you could do in the

context of a classroom you could imagine doing that in the context of being a community leader. I think the one thing that I’ll kind of leave you with in terms of these strategies or maybe two and I told you brevity is not my strength when we were prepping for this is the duality of currency building strategies. So being able to say we are supporting young people in their well-being now and their well-becoming in the world as it is and these same strategies will help them

in co-constructing with our support a better world. So in the book I talk about maybe the next generation can write the book called Made It you know and and that we can look at them saying I grew up in places and with people who supported the wholeness of who I was each aspect of my identity and each piece of opportunity that I didn’t even know that I needed. So I hope that this is a book that is anchored in real life and that people can see it and appreciate it. It’ll be

one of the first that gets the grapple with the pandemic and COVID and racism as it was expressed this past summer. Certainly we know that century is old but it’s new and increased attention but also with the hope that there are actually things that can be done now as we’re building for a real redesign or modernization moving forward. Stephanie Kraus is the author of Making It what kids what today’s kids need for tomorrow’s world. We

love the book. We love the idea that everybody can help kids build currencies, competencies, connections, credentials and cash. Stephanie where do you want to send people online to learn more? Thanks for asking. So if folks want to learn about me and the book they can go to www.stefaniemaliakraus.com and you can find Making It pretty much anywhere. I would recommend you go to bookshop.org and throw a little love toward our independent bookstores but if you are someone who

loves Prime you can go on Amazon, Barnes Noble, Books a Million to find it as well. It’s a great contribution. Thanks for being on the podcast. Thanks for having me. Thanks to Stephanie for joining us on this week’s episode. For more on social capital and alternative currencies check out episode 280 on social relationships and networks. We’ll be sure to put a link in the show notes. All right that’s it for today listeners. Don’t forget to hit

subscribe so you don’t miss out on any future episodes. Thanks for tuning in for the Getting Smart podcast. This is Jessica signing off.