Truitt, DPI unveil 'Portrait of a Graduate,' 7 new goals for HS grads

North Carolina Superintendent Catherine Truitt is calling for students to learn seven new life skills, as part of her effort to measure student preparedness and school success by more than standardized test scores.

The “Portrait of a Graduate” — developed by several groups and North Carolina Department of Public Instruction staff at Truitt’s request — asks the states 1.5 million public schoolchildren students to master: adaptability, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, empathy, a learner’s mindset and personal responsibility.

The “Portrait of a Graduate” is not regulatory. The seven skills — intended to represent skills all adults need to succeed — are still only goals for life skills students would master by the time they graduate.

But Truitt wants to change how schools are graded and ensure students and schools are measured by more than standardized tests.

“An accountability model really drives everything a school does,” Truitt said. “In other words, what’s measured is what gets done.”

Ideally, Truitt said, these skills would be incorporated into those measurements.

That’s when the Portrait of a Graduate would become regulatory — if lawmakers approved changes in the school performance grades to include measurements of whether students had mastered those life skills, as well, said Kristie VanAuken, special assistant to the superintendent focusing on workforce engagement.

Truitt unveiled the Portrait of a Graduate on Tuesday morning with a panel of students — identified by their first names — and two educators and asked them to define the skills and the differences they could make. Several students emphasized an interest in mastering those skills and a particular frustration with standardized testing. They said they learned more in classes that didn’t have standardized tests or learned more after they had already taken their tests, because the learning environments were more engaging, creative and lower-pressure.

One week after her AP Physics test, Marcela, a senior at Clayton High School, said her class conducted labs and applied their knowledge hands-on. She was relaxed but interested.

“I still learned more there than I did I think in the entire semester of taking that class,“ she said of that one week.

Raj, a senior at Green Level High School, agreed that his classes were often more interesting once the tests were taken.

Teachers also pay less attention to students they aren’t worried about passing the tests, said Lily, a senior at Haywood Early College High School.

After the meeting, Truitt said the students stated “a very well articulated position of probably how I think most kids feel.”

Students will need to keep taking standardized tests, and they should, Truitt said. But, she said, “You can experience education without feeling like it's the only thing that's being prioritized. And I think my hope is that this gives teachers permission to do that.”

VanAucken called the combination of the seven skills and academics “deeper learning.”

Standardized tests are required by federal and state laws. The North Carolina General Assembly sets how school performance grades are calculated, which is currently 80% standardized test performance and 20% growth measured on those standardized tests. Most states use more indicators in measuring school performance, namely absenteeism or achievement for English language learners, according to the Education Commission of the States. Some also measure post-high school readiness, school climate, success in certain subject areas, closing achievement gaps between student groups or other outcomes.

Truitt isn’t asking for standardized tests to disappear. She’s asking for schools to focus on practical skills and not simply knowledge. Knowledge by itself can only take a student so far, she argues, and school accountability systems should strive to teach more than to standardized tests.

From a practical standpoint, Truitt told WRAL News, the seven skills are a guidebook for teachers and principals. Principals can consider them during observations and work with teachers to incorporate those skills into their approach to teaching, she said.

“I think from from a more theoretical standpoint, I want this to be part of the conversation when we are talking about revising our accountability model,” Truitt said. “I think that what what what everyone heard today was, I think, evidence of the fact that that model is inadequate.”

Truitt isn’t the first or only North Carolina education leader to call for a change to how the state emphasizes standardized test scores.

The comprehensive remedial plan, ordered in the 28-year-old education adequacy lawsuit known as Leandro, calls for a revision in the school performance grades that accounts for progress toward providing all students “access” to a “sound basic education,” in addition to measuring student proficiency. Implementation of that plan is largely held up in a court battle over who has the power to order funding.

The life skills recommended came from numerous “design groups,” totaling about 1,200 members across the state, including some students. Those groups recommended 50 skills, which a Department of Public Instruction group and educators of the year winners whittled down to seven skills. That group then surveyed the design group members to see if they agreed with the seven skills chosen.

In North Carolina, 11 school systems already have their own “portraits of a graduate,” VanAucken said.

The Wake County Public School System, for example, lists eight similar skills: Knowledge, global awareness, effective communication, critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, an open mind and resiliency.

DPI leaders will continue to emphasize the skills to educators throughout the state, VanAucken said. At the same time, they’ll develop a list of ways to determine whether students have mastered certain skills. Some of these skills are already measured in career and technical education courses, VanAucken said. What those measurements would look like more broadly, or what efforts to teach those skills would look like more broadly, aren’t yet developed.