As artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes how people learn, collaborate, and exchange information, strong human communication skills are likely to become even more important. While AI can generate text, spark ideas, and support dialogue, it’s most effective when guided by people who can clarify purpose, interpret nuance, exercise judgment, and tailor messages for different audiences and contexts. These distinctly human capacities remain critical not only in interpersonal communication but also in AI-mediated environments.

It’s this nuance and depth of understanding that we explore in our recent ETS report, Communication as a Future Ready Skill: A Proposed Framework and Strategies for Assessment, which offers a forward‑looking, research-grounded model for how K–12 learners can demonstrate communication as a durable skill. It highlights the many ways students already communicate—across media, cultures, technologies, and settings—and provides educators with a framework to recognize, support, and assess those abilities. 

We see communication as an active exchange of ideas that blends verbal, nonverbal, written, visual, and listening behaviors. Communication is framed as a set of interrelated practices shaped by the audience, purpose, and context. This perspective reflects how students express themselves today through conversation, writing, multimedia, collaborative platforms, and digital spaces. The framework centers the human capacities that remain foundational regardless of technological change.

To capture this complexity, the framework organizes communication into four key dimensions that together reflect how people share and interpret meaning.

1. Multimodal Expression: Effective communication includes conveying ideas in multiple ways. Students should be able to generate messages in a variety of formats (e.g., through speech, writing, visuals, gestures, digital tools, etc.), revise messages, and select tools to enhance clarity and coherence.
2. Adapting to Audience and Context: Effective communication is intentional and situational. Students should be able to organize ideas logically for a specific purpose, adjust emphasis, and respond appropriately to audiences and contexts.
3. Listening and Comprehension: Effective communication requires both understanding and expressing. Students should be able to listen for key points, ask clarifying questions, interpret nonverbal cues, and infer meaning beyond what is explicitly stated. 
4. Social, Emotional, and Ethical Awareness: Effective communication involves managing interactions with care and consideration. Students should be able to sustain respectful interactions, navigate conflicts constructively, recognize cultural and linguistic differences, and communicate with empathy and integrity.  

Together, these dimensions emphasize that communication is a complex skill that requires expression, interpretation, adaptability, and social awareness.

A central contribution to the report lies in its vision of assessment. Traditional measures often capture only narrow slices of communication, such as an essay or presentation, while overlooking how students express, adapt, and respond across audiences and contexts. This framework encourages a broader, more authentic range of evidence, including discussions, multimedia presentations, digital and interactive interactions, and communication that occurs both inside and beyond the classroom. It also outlines how technology, including AI, can support the collection and interpretation of rich, multimodal evidence and provide timely, actionable feedback. For example, an in‑class presentation using visual and digital tools can demonstrate multimodal expression, while a conversation in a community setting might surface listening skills, adaptability, and empathy. These moments—captured intentionally and consistently—offer a more complete picture of how communication naturally unfolds in students’ daily lives. Such forward‑facing assessment practices may better position educators to recognize strengths, personalize support, and help students build the communication skills they’ll need in increasingly hybrid and AI‑rich futures.

As AI seems poised to automate routine tasks, the distinct human capacity to interpret nuance, exercise ethical judgment, build trust, and genuinely connect with others becomes increasingly valuable. Designed with high school learners in mind, this framework provides principles that could inform teaching and assessment across grade levels. By clarifying what high-quality communication entails and how it can be meaningfully assessed, the report provides a foundation for preparing students to engage confidently and responsibly in an increasingly dynamic and AI-rich world.