Poster to Practice:

Redefining Student Success Through Graduate Profiles

In the coming months, CCEE will be starting a Spotlight series on the districts participating in the Reimagining California Schools Innovation Pilot to capture their graduate profile journeys. Stay tuned!

Overview

Local educational agencies (LEAs) across California are shifting their approach to whole child education by developing and implementing a graduate profile that:

redefines student success in a way that promotes equitable student outcomes,
cultivates student agency, and
prioritizes the skills and competencies to thrive in a rapidly evolving world.

As LEAs engage their communities in establishing a locally-defined whole child vision, these graduate profiles, also known as learner portraits, become a framework to transform how the system serves its students, families, and communities. Scaling Student Success has partnered with several California school districts through its Reimagining California Schools Innovation Pilot to develop and operationalize a “unique, locally-developed graduate profile,” guiding them through the journey of moving from “poster to practice” (Scaling Student Success, What We Do). As districts working with Scaling Student Success embark on their graduate profile journeys to transform student learning, this Spotlight is intended to capture some of their experiences, challenges, and lessons learned, in hopes of inspiring other LEAs to join the movement in redefining what it means to be a college- and career-ready student in California.

Map of California Districts with Graduate Profiles

Crafting a Community-Rooted Vision

This clip was taken from CCEE's Open Door Session on Graduate Profiles. You can view the full session recording on CCEE's website.

Most, if not all, school districts have a vision and mission that serve as their North Star, communicating a collective purpose that guides its students, families, and educators toward its goals, such as those outlined in their Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs). However, to truly prepare students beyond their K-12 educational journeys, districts need to consider how they define, measure, and support student success – beyond the academic goals and outcomes that are typically looked at. A graduate profile aims to guide this paradigm shift by more holistically defining student success. It articulates outcomes that will equip students to be resilient, lifelong learners with durable skills and social-emotional competencies to thrive as a culturally-competent and active citizen (Bringing a Graduate Profile to Life: A Blueprint, 2021).

“The long game is to shift from valuing what we measure to measuring what we value.
Standards are critical and important, but insufficient in today’s world.”

- Rody Boonchouy, Superintendent of Winters JUSD

Conceptualizing a graduate profile begins with a 6- to 7-month collaborative process with input from diverse educational partners across the district and broader community, including students, families, teachers, school and district staff, community leaders, businesses, post-secondary institutions, etc. However, it can take up to a year for some districts, like Vista USD, who not only created a learner portrait, but adult and system portraits as well, along with a set of core values. From surveys and empathy interviews to discussions in various community group meetings (e.g., city council, PTA meetings, Chamber luncheons, rotary meetings), it’s crucial to invite as many voices into the conversation as possible so the community feels a sense of ownership and shared responsibility of the graduate profile outcomes. By engaging community members in conversations about their own life experiences, careers, and what they believe to be important, districts are able to identify the skills, competencies, and mindsets that the community values most for their students. In doing so, the graduate profile becomes rooted in the culture and values of the community, serving as a community-driven promise to its students.

Moving From Poster to Practice

Creating a shared understanding of what it means to be a college- and career-ready student shifts the culture of the broader community, inspiring everyone to wholeheartedly support the changes needed to bring the graduate profile to life. It becomes a visual representation that mirrors the community’s collective commitment to helping its students develop and practice the outlined competencies. To actualize this one-page document into practice, district leaders must take a multi-faceted, strategic approach in prioritizing and showcasing the graduate profile in various settings until it becomes core to every facet of the district and community. The “why” behind certain actions or programs needs to be consistently communicated in alignment with the graduate profile, emphasizing its importance as a core community value when making decisions. It needs to put front and center routinely – referenced in conversations, meetings, Board presentations, professional development opportunities, hiring practices, etc.

This multi-year endeavor to move from “poster to practice” calls for a level of attention, intentionality, and explicitness to build awareness and understanding, providing time for the community to internalize the graduate profile competencies and process what that entails. It’s powerful when school boards and community groups publicly endorse the graduate profile, but it goes beyond displaying the graduate profile in classrooms and windows of businesses around town. It’s about being intentional in facilitating learning experiences that allow students to align their learning at home, at school, and in the community to practice and foster the graduate profile outcomes. This may also mean supporting policies and financial investments that enable conditions for students to develop and demonstrate these outcomes.

This document outlines practices that indicate a fully operationalized Graduate Profile.

A Student-Centered Approach to Learning

This document serves as a blueprint with tools and resources to actualize a Graduate Profile.

Just as a graduate profile often serves as a North Star to guide decision-making, it can also offer a compelling “why” for innovative approaches in the classroom, inspiring educators to reimagine the instructional delivery and methodology by which students practice the graduate profile competencies. The design of a graduate profile in and of itself allows for the freedom and flexibility to create student-centered learning experiences, as it’s typically “silent on inputs used to foster the development of those outcomes” (Bringing a Graduate Profile to Life: A Blueprint, 2021).

By reframing the approach to instructional methods, graduate profiles can facilitate the transition towards a competency-based approach to student-centered learning, cultivating student agency as they take ownership of their own learning at their own pace. It provides the means to rethink how we educate the whole child and overcome the narrowed focus on academic achievement. A teacher at Lindsay USD, one of the districts in the Innovation Pilot, "describes how he defines the role of learning facilitator in social studies: '...the philosophy, the shift, is that learners need to do the doing. It's my job to facilitate scenarios or activities where they have to grapple with ideas and talk with each other to figure things out'" (Learners at the Center in Lindsay, California, 2023). Through project-based learning, work-based learning, and civic learning/engagement, students are given hands-on opportunities to practice and demonstrate the graduate profile competencies, aligned to transferable learning objectives that can be applied in college, career, and life. They’re able to align the learning that happens inside and outside of the classroom, merging the academic core with the success skills needed to thrive as collaborative, creative, and adept critical thinkers.

“We’re not asking teachers to teach different content. Rather, we're asking them to teach content differently... How we teach is more important than what we teach.”

- Roman Stearns, Executive Director of Scaling Student Success

Holistically Measuring Student Progress

The shift to a competency-based education system extends beyond instructional practices to our assessment and accountability structures as well. As a graduate profile is designed to be outcomes-based, it requires a shift from the traditional, test-based assessments to a more holistic way to measure student progress. While we’re still bound to California’s existing accountability system, districts can introduce different entry points to collect evaluation and assessment data that align with the graduate profile outcomes, including metrics for higher-order skills and social-emotional wellness.

A combination of both formative and summative modes of performance assessments can serve as more meaningful mechanisms to collect this data to inform and evaluate students’ learning. A formative performance assessment can be as simple as a complex reasoning task that allows teachers to observe students’ reasoning and problem-solving skills, providing them with the data to inform future instructional plans. Summative performance assessments can range from final presentations to portfolios and exhibitions that demonstrate students’ understanding and mastery of course content, which can then be evaluated using common rubrics and a teacher-led calibration process to assure student work has been equitably scored. Performance assessments offer another manner in which students are behind the wheel of their own learning, promoting student voice and agency in how they demonstrate their progress and mastery of the competencies outlined in the graduate profile.

This document outlines "look-fors" for a high quality performance assessment.

Policy Recommendations

Like many districts have already done, California has the opportunity to usher in transformative changes that can redefine student success, cultivating a generation of lifelong learners who are equipped with the skills, competencies, and mindsets to thrive in the complexities of the 21st Century. Below are some recommendations that have come out of the Reimagining California Schools Innovation Pilot, which focus on how California can begin to more actively promote the vision of a whole-child education that graduate profiles aim to do.

Develop a statewide definition of college and career readiness: While the College/Career Indicator (CCI) is one of the state indicators reported on the California School Dashboard, its criteria for classifying students as “Prepared” is largely based on a blend of readily available, content-focused inputs (e.g. completion of coursework and/or apprenticeship) and outcomes (e.g. assessment scores) (CCI Measures of College Readiness & Career Readiness). However, none of these inputs and outcomes are aligned to an agreed-upon definition of college and career readiness. California could look to other states to gain insight into common characteristics of state definitions, as well as their approaches and priorities in defining college and career readiness (CCRS Center, 2014). A graduate profile is one way to define college and career readiness with content-neutral competencies that can be applied to any college, career, or life pathway that students choose to embark on.
Develop a statewide Graduate Profile: Replicating the lengthy visioning and community engagement process that districts embark on to develop their graduate profile may not be feasible for the state. Instead, California could consider leaning into the work of over 50 LEAs who have already developed graduate profiles to identify the most common categories, which include critical thinking (85%), self-direction (83%), communication (81%), and collaboration (80%) (WestEd). While the compilation likely represents tens of thousands of voices from across the state, California may consider seeking input from the geographic areas that are not well represented by the 50+ graduate profiles.
Consider policy incentives to promote a whole child vision: As all LEAs in California are required to develop a Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP) every three years, California could consider modifying the LCAP template to provide a foundational emphasis on the whole child vision. While the LCFF Priorities/Whole Child Resource Map illustrates how the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) priorities serve the needs of the whole child, modifying the LCAP template could provide the structure to guide LEAs in more intentionally mapping the priority areas to whole child outcomes.