A Review of State-Level Portraits of a Graduate

• In Event: Promoting Competence-Based Education: Landscape, Assessment, and Practices

Abstract

Objectives
With the development of competency-based education (Lopez et al., 2017; Sturgis & Kasey, 2018), especially during and post COVID (Patrick, 2021), many schools, districts, and states started to develop Portrait of a Graduate (PoG) as the North Star for the educational transformation in the system. This paper aims for a comprehensive review of the PoGs developed at the state level, laying out the commonalities and differences in the inclusion and definition of skills/competencies, and exploring the alignment with workforce frameworks (Ling, et al., in progress).
We conduct the review with these research questions in mind:
1. Which states have or are in the process of developing a PoG?
2. What are the skills or dimensions mentioned in these PoGs? Which skills are mentioned most frequently?
3. What are the differences in the skills included? Are there any differences based on some state variables, e.g., demographics, urban vs. rural states?
4. Are there any differences in how states label or define these skills?
5. How are these PoG skills connected with the ones identified in the workforce skill frameworks? Are there any disconnects?

Methods and data
We started from a few states in Erwin & Silva- Padrón (2022)’s Appendix A: 50-State Scan, and added a few other states which have seen significant development in CBE. We went to the states’ department of Education websites and downloaded their PoGs. So far we have reviewed 12 states: UT, SC, GA, IN, KT, WA, VA, MI, NC, RI, CO, NY. These PoGs are named differently: Portrait/Profile of a Graduate/Learner, Graduate Profile, and in some instances such as Georgia, which has a PoG through their Career, Technical, and Agricultural Education program (Profile of a Georgia CTAE Graduate), these frameworks were overlooked in previous scans. We aim for a thorough scan of all 50 states’ effort in developing PoG and will include all the completed and in-progress versions in our review.

Preliminary results
There is a great amount of variation in the structure and complexity of the PoGs reviewed, since states are at different stages of development. Some states have a webpage or a visual listing out the critical competencies without definitions, while others have multiple levels of skill categorization, grade-band descriptors, etc. (Table 1). There is substantial overlap in the top skills mentioned across states (Table 2).

Significance
The development of PoG involves substantial effort from multiple stakeholder groups in a state’s education system. This review will serve as a reference guide for other states, districts, and schools that plan to start their CBE and PoG development and implementation process. The identification of frequently mentioned skills sheds light on what are the important constructs to measure. The connection with the workforce skill frameworks will demonstrate the alignment or lack thereof between what is expected of a high school graduate and that of a qualified employee.

Authors

• Yuan Wang, Educational Testing Service

• Jonathan Rochkind, Educational Testing Service

• Guangming Ling, Educational Testing Service