Portrait of a Graduate Implementation: A Research-Based Guide to Moving From Vision to Practice
Portraits of a Graduate are becoming one of the most visible efforts to redefine what students should know and be able to do when they leave school. Amid concerns about equity in standardized testing and changing workforce requirements, states and districts are identifying competencies students need in addition to academic knowledge—such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration, adaptability, and self-direction—to help them navigate change and solve unfamiliar problems.
While the concept of a Portrait of a Graduate is compelling and can tell a community what it values, adopting a policy alone doesn’t change what students experience in classrooms, what lessons look like, or how assessments are designed.
Implementation is proving to be much harder, as schools struggle to translate a Portrait vision into practical, on-the-ground learning experiences, assessment design, educator capacity, and credible evidence of student learning.
This article focuses on the role of assessment in expressing the values and purpose behind a Portrait model and on strategies that help educators and leaders find credible evidence of learning.
A helpful way to understand the complete picture is through these four questions:
Portrait → Practice → Evidence → Trust
Portrait (shared vision): What do we want graduates to know and be able to do?
Practice (student experience): What do students do consistently to develop those capabilities?
Evidence (observable learning): What would justify saying students are actually learning and developing Portrait capabilities?
Trust (credible claims): What makes those claims credible to educators, students, families, boards, colleges, and employers?
What is a Portrait of a Graduate?
A Portrait of a Graduate—sometimes called a Profile of a Graduate or Portrait of a Learner—is a shared definition of the knowledge, skills, and capabilities students should develop by graduation.
Common competencies include critical thinking, communication, collaboration, adaptability, creativity, problem solving, and self-direction. Individual states and districts define them differently according to local priorities.
The important distinction is that a Portrait is primarily a vision of student success. It is not, by itself, a curriculum, instructional model, assessment system, or grading system.
This distinction matters because a district can produce a thoughtful Portrait, place the competencies in strategic plans and classroom posters, and still change very little about what students are actually asked to do.
At least 26 states now have a Portrait of a Graduate or guidance for districts to develop one (America Succeeds, 2026). Yet emerging district research suggests implementation is far less mature than adoption. In a study of 15 districts reported by Education Week, nine were implementing their Portraits but not systematically, five showed more coordinated implementation, and only one demonstrated what researchers characterized as transformational integration across most of the system (Langreo, 2026).
Why are Portraits of a Graduate gaining attention now?
Portraits respond to a growing tension in education. In the age of AI, traditional proxies for measuring student achievement no longer carry the validity they once did, and expectations from employers and higher education institutions have changed dramatically. Student engagement and chronic absenteeism continue to plague educators and school budgets.
More than four in ten middle and high school students surveyed in 2026 said school usually did not feel interesting or like a good fit for their talents. Students who reported more relevant classwork, stronger relationships, and other engaging school experiences were also far more likely to feel prepared for life after graduation—81% among the most engaged students compared with 27% among the least engaged (Hrynowski, 2026).
Employers continue to emphasize capabilities such as communication, collaboration, problem solving, and adaptability. Portraits give schools a way to state explicitly that these outcomes matter alongside academic content.
Artificial intelligence has added another challenge. Fifty-four percent of U.S. teens surveyed by Pew Research Center said they had used AI chatbots for schoolwork, and one in ten said chatbots helped with all or most of their schoolwork (McClain et al., 2026).
By itself, a finished product provides an increasingly incomplete picture of what a student understands, how the student reached a conclusion, or which decisions were actually theirs, which brings us to the central question behind Portraits:
What should students be able to do with what they know—and what evidence would allow us to recognize it?
Portrait competencies do not replace academic knowledge
A common misperception is that durable skills will replace disciplinary knowledge and water down curriculum. But critical thinking, communication, and problem solving do not exist independently of knowledge.
A student cannot think critically about history without knowing enough history to recognize context and weigh evidence. A student cannot communicate a scientific explanation without understanding the science. Creative problem solving depends on enough disciplinary knowledge to understand the problem, evaluate constraints, and judge possible solutions.
Durable skills are not substitutes for academic knowledge. They are ways students use that knowledge.
North Carolina is a good example. Its Portrait resources include teacher-developed performance tasks that intentionally combine durable skills with the state's academic standards rather than treating them as a separate curriculum (North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, n.d.).
The question is whether students have repeated opportunities to apply disciplinary knowledge in ways that require Portrait competencies.
Why does Portrait of a Graduate implementation stall?
Emerging research suggests that translating vision into daily practice is where many Portrait efforts struggle.
Researchers studying 15 districts found that assessment was a recurring obstacle. Educators were generally familiar with conventional academic assessments but less certain how to evaluate competencies such as collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and global citizenship. When schools do not know how to assess the outcomes in their Portrait, they tend to return to familiar forms of assessment, and instruction follows (Langreo, 2026).
Digital Promise and Pearson have identified the same challenge. Their work with districts documents growing experimentation with performance-based assessments, portfolios, authentic assessment, badges, and other methods for recognizing future-ready skills (Dunbar et al., 2025).
While the field has become relatively good at describing what graduates should become, the harder problem is designing the learning and evidence that gets them there.
How do schools assess Portrait of a Graduate competencies?
One of the biggest challenges for educators is:
How do we measure behaviors that don’t lend themselves to quantification, such as collaboration, critical thinking, communication, creativity, or adaptability?
The natural response for assessment is to write a rubric. Rubrics create shared language, make expectations more visible, and help educators and students describe differences in performance. North Carolina, for example, has developed grade-banded Portrait rubrics alongside performance tasks and implementation resources (North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, n.d.).
But a rubric does not automatically make a competency measurable.
Deciding that a student earned a three rather than a four on “critical thinking” still requires interpretation. More importantly, one strong performance on one assignment does not establish a capability that is supposed to transfer across subjects, situations, and time.
The better question is not “Do we have a critical-thinking rubric?” but “What evidence would justify saying this student is becoming a stronger critical thinker?”
That shift—from scoring a predesigned rubric to examining the evidence—is foundational.
From abstract competency to credible claim
A useful way to think about competency assessment is through these layers:
The construct is the broad capability we value, the behavior translates it into something observable, the evidence captures what the student actually said, did, created, revised, or explained. Only then can educators make a claim about what the evidence suggests the student can do.
A competency is an inference. A behavior is something we can observe. Evidence is what allows us to connect the two.
Why one score is rarely enough
Portrait competencies are complex, varied, and may manifest differently in different contexts, so assessments should take that into consideration. A single grade for collaboration on one project at one point in time may not reflect a student’s true capabilities. Durable skills require a stronger body of evidence than a single assessment can provide.
One way of thinking about that body of evidence is:
Task × Context × Time × Observer
Does the behavior appear on different tasks?
Does it transfer into different subjects or situations?
Does it persist over time?
Do different observations or sources of evidence point in the same direction?
The goal is not to create an enormous data-collection system around every student. It is simply to avoid making broad claims from narrow evidence.
Durable skills require durable evidence.
Limited evidence vs. richer evidence
Doing justice to the depth of Portrait competencies, as well as strengthening academic integrity in the face of AI, requires educators to look for richer evidence of learning. This doesn’t necessarily mean a bigger assignment or more grading. It means that the evidence reveals more of the student's thinking, choices, application, or development.
This doesn’t require educators to abandon traditional assessments. A quiz, for example, can be very helpful for quickly checking knowledge. A traditional essay can reveal important things about writing and reasoning, and teacher observation can be highly informative. But different assessments answer different questions.
The problem occurs when limited or untrustworthy evidence is asked to support a claim it cannot reasonably support, or when an assessment doesn't lend itself to a particular competencies.
For a deeper discussion of authentic learning and assessment, including rigor, AI, and credible evidence of student understanding, see What Is Authentic Assessment? A Practical Guide for the Age of AI.
What are four useful sources of learning evidence?
To get a more complete picture of student learning, especially for complex competencies, it’s helpful to triangulate assessment using more than one perspective and data point. This helps reveal nuance, gives students more ownership and responsibility, and can even reduce the burden teachers face when they are the sole arbiters of grades.
Here is what each stakeholders can contribute to the assessment process.
Teacher → disciplinary expertise and observable performance
Teachers can assess accuracy, use of disciplinary knowledge, misconceptions, reasoning, and growth over time.
Student → thinking, reflection, and process
The metacognitive experience of self-reflection is a proven strategy for activating deeper learning (Choi et al., 2023; Lin & Lehman, 1999). Students can explain choices that may not be visible in a final product: why they chose a particular topic for study, why they changed strategies, rejected an idea, responded to feedback, or interpreted evidence in a particular way. They can also reflect on mistakes and consider how to improve for the next assignment.
Peers → collaboration, critique, and contribution
Peers can sometimes observe dimensions of teamwork teachers can’t see: listening, reliability, response to disagreement, and contribution to shared work. Peer feedback can add a perspective that’s trusted by students, and classmates can learn from and inspire one another.
Authentic audience → clarity, usefulness, and impact
When work is produced for an audience or end user beyond the classroom, that audience can also provide helpful feedback for students. Although it’s not a formal grade or score, engagement statistics, comments, shares, or in-person reactions can provide evidence about whether communication was understandable, a product was useful, or the work achieved its intended purpose.
Not every assignment requires all four of these sources, but getting input from multiple perspectives helps educators collect evidence appropriate to the claim being made and the skills being assessed. Doing so can also lend more credibility to an assessment in the eyes of stakeholders because more than one perspective informed the evaluation.
What does authentic evidence look like? A case study.
Several years ago, one of my students noticed that drivers repeatedly ran a stop sign at a busy intersection in our community, and he wanted to do something about it.
For a documentary project, he investigated the problem by conducting primary-source research, recording video evidence, interviewing witnesses, researching rates of pedestrian deaths caused by reckless driving, and synthesizing the information into a 90-second story explaining what was happening. The video was published publicly on YouTube, and after local police saw it, officers began monitoring the intersection and giving citations.
While the technical quality and writing of the project were mediocre and not worthy of an A grade, the documentary got the job done, and the overall impact of the project outweighed the technical weaknesses. In other words, the whole of a project like this is greater than the sum of the parts.
If I had evaluated the student by adhering strictly to a generic rubric, I would have missed much of what the experience revealed about this student and the value of this learning experience. The competencies, attitudes, and values at the heart of the curriculum (selecting a research topic, critically evaluating evidence, clearly communicating complex concepts, and demonstrating courage and professionalism) were visible throughout the assignment process.
Not every assignment needs to change public policy. But the point is that the assignment created conditions in which important capabilities became visible to all stakeholders. Other advantages of experiences like this are that they mimic real-world processes and organically integrate multiple standards and Portrait competencies into one assignment, making the need for standalone assignments and assessments unnecessary.
How can districts implement a Portrait without creating more work for teachers? A case study.
Implementing a Portrait doesn’t have to mean creating entirely new assignments, abandoning direct instruction, or turning every lesson into project-based learning. Instead, examine existing curriculum and ask where students could make more meaningful decisions, apply knowledge more independently, communicate with different audiences and make an impact, collaborate more intentionally, or produce stronger evidence of understanding.
A Portrait shouldn't simply add work. It should change how existing work is designed.
Sometimes the change is relatively small.
A French class, for example, still needs vocabulary and grammar practice for language acquisition. Instead of relying solely on traditional assignments like worksheets and weekly vocabulary tests, educators can design experiences that require the same knowledge and practice over time while also strengthening Portrait competencies.
For example, students might contribute articles, images, and multimedia elements to a class website for French-speaking visitors to their town. They could explain how to reach a landmark (directions), write restaurant reviews (food and culture), describe local history (geography and verb tenses), and add recordings of themselves speaking to practice and demonstrate pronunciation.
In this example, the learning artifact changes, but the academic content, requirements, and standards remain the same.
In both of these case studies, what changes is how students use and apply their knowledge, the agency and independence they have to make and justify decisions, and the purpose they have for completing assignments with accuracy, quality, and integrity.
How is AI changing Portrait of a Graduate assessment?
If anything, artificial intelligence makes the Portrait of a Graduate even more relevant and important as schools look to find credible and reliable evidence of learning. More than half of U.S. teens, for example, report using AI chatbots for schoolwork (McClain et al., 2026).
Repositioning assessment from a single, text-based evaluation to a multidimensional one with visible processes and authentic outcomes makes assignments inherently cheat-resistant. Assessments like those mentioned here also strengthen Portrait competencies and attitudes that are in demand by employers and colleges.
Whether or not students are allowed to use AI in their work, a Portrait changes the conversation from “Did a student cheat?” to “What credible evidence of learning demonstrates student knowledge?” This puts educators’ focus back on learning and growth rather than rule enforcement.
How can districts demonstrate progress credibly to stakeholders?
Every major initiative eventually faces the same question: How do we know this is working?
An inspiring student project is compelling, but it doesn't establish districtwide progress. Neither does a new dashboard filled with competency scores. To make a credible case, districts need two complementary forms of evidence: what students are learning and how the system is changing to make that learning possible (Dunbar et al., 2025).
A completed portfolio does not necessarily demonstrate growth, just as a curriculum map identifying Portrait competencies does not prove students are developing them.
Credible student evidence means students should be able to explain their thinking and demonstrate what they understand. Examining multiple artifacts over time, applying clear, shared expectations, and drawing on different perspectives on student performance creates a more trustworthy picture than a single product or score (Willis et al., 2022).
Implementation evidence should go beyond counting professional development sessions or newly aligned curriculum units. Leaders need to examine the experiences students are actually having, whether those experiences demand meaningful intellectual work, and whether opportunities extend beyond a handful of enthusiastic classrooms.
Make learning publicly visible.
Districts can communicate progress to parents, colleges, and community members through public exhibitions, student-led conferences, digital portfolios, and accessible community reports. Rather than simply announcing that students are developing critical-thinking or communication skills, show examples of their work, let students explain their learning, and provide the context that makes those examples meaningful.
A compelling school board presentation might pair a student-produced documentary or scientific investigation with the student's reflection, evidence of revision, and feedback on the work. Alongside that story, district leaders can report how widely comparable learning experiences are being implemented, what patterns they are seeing in student performance, and what they plan to improve next.
This approach has a real-world precedent. Shelby County Public Schools in Kentucky uses a public-facing dashboard combining student defenses of learning, quantitative indicators, and stories that illustrate its Profile of a Graduate (Shelby County Public Schools, n.d.).
None of this requires abandoning familiar measures of success. Academic achievement, grades, attendance, graduation rates, and standardized assessments remain important indicators. Portrait evidence provides an additional perspective on what students can actually do with their knowledge.
The goal isn't to replace the measures families already understand. It's to make visible what those measures cannot show—and give the community credible evidence that the district's vision is becoming a reality.
Resources
How vulnerable are your assignments to cheating with AI? Use this tool to find out.
Read more about how to design authentic assessments
References
America Succeeds. (2026). Beyond the portrait: How states turn vision into infrastructure for student success. https://americasucceeds.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Beyond-the-Portrait.pdf
Choi, H., Jovanovic, J., Poquet, O., Brooks, C., Joksimović, S., & Williams, J. J. (2023). The benefit of reflection prompts for encouraging learning with hints in an online programming course. The Internet and Higher Education, 58, Article 100903. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2023.100903
Dunbar, K. M., Wilczak, K., Mills, K., Mireles, N., & Shell, A. (2025). Portraits in progress: Emerging future-ready skills assessment strategies. Digital Promise; Pearson. https://doi.org/10.51388/20.500.12265/266
Hrynowski, Z. (2026, August 25). Engaged students more confident in their post-high school future. Gallup. https://news.gallup.com/poll/713831/engaged-students-confident-post-high-school-future.aspx
Langreo, L. (2026, September 16). Why “portrait of a graduate” initiatives struggle to transform instruction. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/why-portrait-of-a-graduate-initiatives-struggle-to-transform-instruction/2026/09
Lin, X., & Lehman, J. D. (1999). Supporting learning of variable control in a computer-based biology environment: Effects of prompting college students to reflect on their own thinking. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 36(7), 837–858. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1098-2736(199909)36:7%3C837::AID-TEA6%3E3.0.CO;2-U
McClain, C., Anderson, M., Sidoti, O., & Bishop, W. (2026, February 24). How teens use and view AI. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/02/24/how-teens-use-and-view-ai/
North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. (n.d.). Portrait of a graduate. https://www.dpi.nc.gov/districts-schools/office-research-promising-practices/portrait-graduate
Shelby County Public Schools. (n.d.). SCPS community dashboard. Retrieved October 28, 2026, from https://sites.google.com/shelby.kyschools.us/scpsdashboard/home
Willis, L., Badrinarayan, A., & Martinez, M. (2022). Quality criteria for systems of performance assessment for school, district, and network leaders. Learning Policy Institute. https://doi.org/10.54300/439.730
Additional reading
Aldis, A. (2026, May 4). Spring teacher survey: Hopeful about their students, worried about the system. EdChoice. https://www.edchoice.org/2026-spring-teacher-survey-hopeful-about-their-students-worried-about-the-system/
Beilock, S. L. (2024, February 5). Reactivating the SAT/ACT requirement for Dartmouth undergraduate admissions. Dartmouth College. https://president.dartmouth.edu/news/2024/02/reactivating-satact-requirement-dartmouth-undergraduate-admissions
Creghan, C., & Adair-Creghan, K. (2015). The positive impact of project-based learning on attendance of an economically disadvantaged student population: A multiyear study. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning, 9(2). https://doi.org/10.7771/1541-5015.1496
Diliberti, M. K., Chu, L., Rainey, L. R., DiNicola, S. E., Lake, R. J., & Schwartz, H. L. (2025). Chronic absenteeism still a struggle in 2024–2025: Selected findings from the American School District Panel and the American Youth Panel (Report No. RR-A956-34). RAND Corporation. https://doi.org/10.7249/RRA956-34
Faioes, S. (2026, August 20). Teacher advice for Portrait of a Graduate portfolios. Digital Promise. https://digitalpromise.org/articles/teacher-advice-for-portrait-of-a-graduate-portfolios/
Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. E. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 75–86. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep4102_1
National Association of Colleges and Employers. (2026, May 28). Employers give new college grads a passing grade on job readiness. https://www.naceweb.org/about-us/press/2026/employers-give-new-college-grads-a-passing-grade-on-job-readiness
New York State Education Department. (2026, September 14). NYSED advances next phase of NY Inspires education transformation. https://www.nysed.gov/news/2026/nysed-advances-next-phase-ny-inspires-education-transformation
Newmann, F. M., Bryk, A. S., & Nagaoka, J. K. (2001). Authentic intellectual work and standardized tests: Conflict or coexistence? Consortium on Chicago School Research. https://consortium.uchicago.edu/publications/authentic-intellectual-work-and-standardized-tests-conflict-or-coexistence
Palmore, C., & Hiller, R. (2026, August 19). Portrait of a Graduate initiatives can fail, but New York’s doesn’t have to. The 74. https://www.the74million.org/article/portrait-of-a-graduate-initiatives-can-fail-but-new-yorks-doesnt-have-to/
Saavedra, A. R., Lock Morgan, K., Liu, Y., Garland, M. W., Rapaport, A., Hu, A., Hoepfner, D., & Haderlein, S. K. (2022). The impact of project-based learning on AP exam performance. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 44(4), 638–666. https://doi.org/10.3102/01623737221084355
Sanchez, E. I. (2025). The implications of grade inflation: Evaluating the prediction of first-year college GPA using high school GPA and ACT scores (Research Report R2432). ACT. https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/R2432-The-Implications-of-Grade-Inflation-2025-11.pdf
Steiner, E. D., Levine, P. R., & Doan, S. (2026). Teacher well-being, pay, and intentions to leave in 2026: Selected findings from the 2026 State of the American Teacher survey. RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA4404-2.html
Walton Family Foundation. (2026, August 26). Voices of Gen Z: What helps students engage at school. https://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/learning/voices-of-gen-z-what-helps-students-engage-at-school
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