Take a moment to consider your portrait of a high school graduate. What would you want them to know and be able to do at the time of their graduation? It seems on the surface like a fairly straightforward question. Students who do well in their classes, pass their tests and get good grades show they are ready to graduate and move on.

But then there are several “what abouts?” What about the students who are skilled and passionate about the arts (visual, movement, music, writing) or hands on learning such as auto mechanics, and who may struggle with one or more core classes? Or what about students who are gifted in communication skills, who are able to bring people together and enable extraordinary group work to happen, but are not good test takers? Or what about a person whose first language is not English but who speaks several languages starting with the one they speak at home and in their community? Or how about a student who, for whatever reason (and there are potentially many) has shown tremendous growth and has clearly (but only recently) found themselves as a learner but may not be quite at the test measured finish line when the school year ends.

It becomes even more complicated when we consider the wide range of human behavior, the ways we learn and the many ways we demonstrate that learning. For those with more than one child, we know there is no one measure, curriculum or pathway that would meet each and all of their needs and capture all of their gifts and challenges. Boston parent Suleika Soto made that clear when speaking about her children at a press conference on Oct. 20 at the state house: “Both of my daughters are successful. Both are smart, determined and compassionate. They just show their learning in very different ways. And that’s exactly why a one size fits all test can never measure a student’s full potential.” This is certainly true of my three stepchildren. All are very bright, passionate learners, and extremely different in how they learn, communicate and how (or whether) they functioned in a school setting.

Now that the MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System) is no longer a graduation requirement the state and districts are having to (having the opportunity to) consider what graduation requirements should be, which is another way of asking the question: what do we want our children to know and be able to do when they leave school, which is another way of asking: what is the purpose of school?

Several districts have created processes for constructing what they are calling the “Portrait of a Graduate.” The Barr Foundation has provided funding for fourteen districts across Massachusetts to develop their own portraits, and several districts outside of the Barr initiative have engaged in the process as well.

The state of Massachusetts has recently released its own Portrait of a Graduate. The state’s portrait “identifies six key skills and competencies, centered around three core qualities: Thinkers, Contributors and Leaders, that will guide the preparation of high school students for the real world.  

Massachusetts graduates will be:  

Thinkers  

  • Academically Prepared: Graduates have a strong foundation across academic disciplines, equipping them with both the knowledge to thrive in college, career, and civic life and the skills to be lifelong learners.
  • Critical Problem-Solvers: Graduates critically examine information to draw connections, question assumptions, infer meaning, and shape solutions.  

Contributors  

  • Self-Aware Navigators: Graduates understand themselves, their strengths, and their opportunities and can effectively leverage their unique skills to navigate a variety of paths and environments.
  • Intentional Collaborators: Graduates engage respectfully and productively with diverse individuals and groups, recognizing the value of their unique perspectives, identities and experiences as well as those of others.  

Leaders 

  • Effective Communicators: Graduates confidently and clearly express their ideas to diverse audiences across a variety of mediums.
  • Responsible Decision-Makers: Graduates can set and pursue personal goals, make healthy and financially sustainable choices, and demonstrate confidence and competence in shaping their lives. 

The portraits developed by districts across the state, from Lowell to Pittsfield and the Berkshires closely align with the portrait developed by the state.

Given the Massachusetts portrait, is is particularly baffling that the Massachusetts Statewide K-12 Graduation Council, chaired by Secretary of Education Patrick Tutwiler, has released a preliminary report that ignores the state’s own avowed values, expressed through their Portrait, and the data they collected in a series of listening sessions. Their report calls for end-of-course exams, prepared and scored by DESE (Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) as graduation requirements. Essentially MCAS 2 or is it 3.0, a one size fits all, top down standardized test approach soundly rejected by the voters in 2024. Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) president Max Page expressed his disappointment: “We should not be trying to recreate a system that has failed our students.”

Citizens for Public Schools, MTA and local groups have been holding what they are calling People’s Forums around the state focused on what we want for our students, including a virtual forum we held here in western Massachusetts on October 22, and what we have been hearing from community members across the state aligns with our state’s Portrait of a Graduate, and are clear that this complex portrait of the graduates we want cannot be assessed by a single, one size fits all approach such as end-of-course standardized tests.

Citizens for Public Schools is pulling together the data collected in the forums and will share with the governors committee, with the governor, with DESE, with the education committee of the legislature, with media, with school committees, and with all who participated in the forums in hopes of putting a stop to what seems to be a march backwards, to a course Massachusetts clearly rejected just last year and continues to reject at these multiple forums.

What does your portrait of a graduate look like? The state’s Portrait makes clear that while they value academic learning, they also value much more. Secretary Tutwiler said, “The Vision of a Graduate gives us a thoughtful, unifying blueprint for what it means to graduate high school in Massachusetts. It emphasizes that every student has the capacity to be a thinker, contributor, and leader and that our job as educators and communities is to nurture those qualities every step of the way.” These are not qualities that can be nurtured through end of course standardized tests.

Join the conversation about the education we want for our children and make clear our concerns that the state is ignoring their own vision, the data they have themselves collected, and the data that Citizens for Public Schools has collected when they recommend more high stakes testing. Please contact your local legislators, school committees, the education committee of the legislature, DESE, local media and Secretary Tutwiler. It’s up to us to raise our voices as loudly as we can to ensure that we are not being dragged back into a one-size-fits-all, top down approach that has failed our children and our public education system, and that our portraits of our graduates are fully realized.

Doug Selwyn taught at K-12 public schools from 1985 until 2000 and then at university as a professor of education until he retired in 2017. He is the chair of the Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution education task force. You can reach him at dougselwyn12@gmail.com.