Portraits of a Graduate – Again

I’ve written about “Portraits of a Graduate” before.

“Portraits of a Graduate” is a vision that school districts create that describes what someone who finishes high school should be able to do. They are aspirational in that they talk about things like “being a good communicator, a lifelong learner, and a global citizen.”

Although traditional districts would want you to think differently these days, “Portraits of a Graduate” have been around for at least 30 years – maybe longer. But today, if you pay attention to public education media, you might think that these visions have just appeared – ready to transform public schools.

Tom Vander Ark’s group, Getting Smart, is even hosting an online town hall later this month to focus on “Portraits of a Graduate in Practice.” Vander Ark is teaming up with NGLC, short for Next Generation Learning Challenges, to highlight a few districts that have changed their districts for the better due to their adoption of Portraits. According to the town hall invited,

“…join Getting Smart team members, NGLC, and a couple of teacher and student representatives from districts highlighted in a recent NGLC report focused on what comes after a school district adopts a Portrait of a Graduate. These districts have been hard at work on aligning to their Portrait and ensuring that it is a living, breathing document. Alongside these guests, we will discuss how a unified vision for student success might change learning experiences, shape relationships with the community, evolve professional learning opportunities, and redefine culture.”

I guess if there are school districts that want to take on this work, then more power to them.

But I’ve got two issues with Portraits of a Graduate and the promises made to a learning community when school districts decide to implement them.

First, and we’ve talk about this before too, most of this work falls into the “boutique” category of school improvement. Groups like Getting Smart and NGLC seek out success stories, no matter how small their influence might be, to highlight in hopes other districts will magically scale what these few districts are doing. Now I don’t want to criticize something that is working for a school district, but the fact of the matter is that very few schools and school districts have Portraits of a Graduate, and even those who do have not implemented the vision successfully. Why?

Here’s the second issue. I don’t think most schools or school districts have any interest in implementing Portraits of a Graduate. Portraits have become another “mission statement” in schools. Remember back in the 20^th century when every school had to have a mission statement? And, they had to have those mission statements posted all of the school so anyone who visited would know what everyone was supposed to be doing during school time.

Schools and school districts have no interest in implementing Portraits of a Graduate because the goals contained in a Portraits document do no align with most of the curriculum expectations approved by state legislatures and school boards regarding what the state and local leadership wants kids to learn. Beside, even if a school or a district wanted to implement a Portrait as their learning goal, the politics involved in changing curriculum, teaching staff, and how a school day looks would be too divisive. It’s easier to leave things the way things are.

When I worked in a large, urban school district in Texas back in the 1990’s, we had a Portrait of a Graduate. I actually liked what was included in our district’s portrait. But I soon found out that, as principal, I could ask my teachers and students to implement maybe 50% of the portrait’s goals into the fabric of each learning day. The rest we failed at when we tried to incorporate it into our school.

It was at that moment that I knew, if Portraits of a Graduate ever had a chance to influence our young learners moving forward, then those working on Portraits would have to leave the school setting and work out of school on those types of goals.

Portraits of a Graduate is a good idea. It’s just a bad idea to try to get schools and school districts to find success with them.

Til tomorrow. SVB