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Seventeen states had adopted statewide portraits, according to Education Week.
New York’s Board of Regents adopted the New York State Portrait of a Graduate, one of the most recent states to do so.
Far more individual districts have built their own portraits than states have adopted them statewide.
State education agencies adopt statewide portraits to set a common direction, as New York, North Carolina, Utah, Kentucky, and Vermont have done.
School districts develop local portraits that reflect their own community’s priorities, usually through design teams that include teachers, students, families, and employers.
Individual schools sometimes adapt a district portrait further.
In Kentucky alone, more than 140 districts have developed local portraits alongside the state framework, according to the Kentucky Department of Education.
Whatever the level, the output looks similar: a short list of named competencies, often presented as a one-page graphic, that the system then uses to align curriculum, instruction, assessment, and reporting.
Whatever the level, the output looks similar: a short list of named competencies, often presented as a one-page graphic, that the system then uses to align curriculum, instruction, assessment, and reporting.
States and districts adopt a Portrait of a Graduate because employers, colleges, and communities keep reporting the same gap: graduates arrive with academic credentials but without consistent evidence of durable skills such as critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. A portrait names those skills explicitly and makes the whole system accountable for developing them.
The framework has a traceable origin. Battelle for Kids, working with the EdLeader21 Network, developed the Portrait of a Graduate model over more than a decade and has supported hundreds of school districts and state agencies in designing their own. In July 2025, Battelle for Kids joined AASA, The School Superintendents Association, which had already launched a Portrait of a Graduate Academy with Battelle for Kids in December 2023. The two organizations report that portrait work has reached districts in more than 40 states.
states had adopted statewide portraits as of December 2023, per Education Week
states where portrait work has reached districts
of districts with a portrait report moderate to high impact
The momentum is measurable. Education Week reported in December 2023 that 17 states had adopted statewide portraits over the preceding decade, with Kentucky, North Carolina, and Wyoming among the most recent adopters and New York then on track to follow. In Battelle for Kids survey data, 69 percent of districts with a portrait say it has had a moderate to high impact on their district and community.
Policy is now catching up with the vision. In New York, the Portrait of a Graduate is not an optional statement of values: it is the guiding framework of NY Inspires, the state plan to transform education, and it will shape what a diploma means for students entering grade 9 in the 2029-30 school year. High school portraits are becoming graduation infrastructure, not posters.
Most portraits name between six and seven competencies, and the same skills recur across nearly every state and district version. The labels vary; the underlying set is remarkably stable.
Skills like these are sometimes called durable skills, because they transfer across jobs and outlast any specific technology. North Carolina uses exactly that term for the seven skills in its statewide portrait.
The New York State Portrait of a Graduate, adopted by the Board of Regents in July 2025, names six interconnected attributes, all grounded in Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education. A New York graduate is:
Academically Prepared: builds a strong foundation in New York State learning standards to support success in college, careers, civic engagement, and life.
A Creative Innovator: uses imagination, curiosity, and flexible thinking to solve problems and adapt to new challenges.
A Critical Thinker: analyzes information, evaluates evidence, and makes thoughtful connections across disciplines.
An Effective Communicator: expresses ideas clearly and listens actively across settings and audiences.
A Global Citizen: engages with diverse perspectives and contributes meaningfully to community and society.
Reflective and Future Focused: sets goals, reflects on growth, and plans for what comes after graduation.
The New York State Education Department (NYSED) publishes the full attribute definitions, along with Need-to-Know documents written for students, parents, educators, administrators, and school board members.
Five statewide portraits, side by side. Each state chose a different number of attributes, a different emphasis, and a different relationship to graduation requirements, which is exactly the point: a portrait is meant to reflect its community.
Adopted July 2025
6 attributes
Academically Prepared; Creative Innovator; Critical Thinker; Effective Communicator; Global Citizen; Reflective and Future Focused
Grounded in Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education and tied to NY Inspires, with full alignment for students entering grade 9 in 2029-30
Adopted October 2022
7 attributes
Adaptability; Collaboration; Communication; Critical Thinking; Empathy; Learner’s Mindset; Personal Responsibility
Calls them durable skills and publishes grade-band rubrics, I Can statements, and teacher-built performance tasks for every skill
Adopted October 2022
6 attributes
Engaged Citizen; Critical Thinker; Effective Communicator; Empowered Learner; Creative Contributor; Productive Collaborator
Explicitly voluntary; more than 140 Kentucky districts have built their own local portraits alongside it
Adopted May 2019
13 characteristics
Grouped under three themes: Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose (the Utah Talent MAP), spanning academic mastery, wellness, communication, critical thinking, collaboration, and more
Publishes competency model rubrics and frames the portrait as aspirational rather than measured
Developed from 2017
6 attributes
Learner Agency; Global Citizenship; Academic Proficiency; Communication; Critical Thinking and Problem Solving; Well-Being
Each attribute carries key descriptors and performance indicators, and the portrait anchors proficiency-based graduation requirements
Wyoming also adopted a statewide portrait in the same recent wave, according to Education Week’s December 2023 reporting. For the full New York picture, including the NY Inspires timeline and what changes for diplomas, see our New York State Portrait of a Graduate district implementation guide.
District portraits are where the framework meets practice, because a district can connect its portrait directly to instruction, assessment, and reporting. Four patterns stand out from districts across the country.
In Utah, Iron County School District and Juab School District had both created local portraits before the Utah State Board of Education released the statewide Utah Talent MAP in 2019. Early district portraits like these shaped what states later adopted.
In North Carolina, Mooresville Graded School District, Iredell-Statesville Schools, Edgecombe County Public Schools, and Caldwell County Schools launched the Skills for the Future initiative in September 2025 with the state education agency, building assessment tools anchored in the portrait’s seven durable skills, starting with collaboration.
Farmingdale School District in New York launched its own Portrait of a Graduate initiative to identify the skills its community wants graduates to hold, customizing the national model to local aspirations before the state framework arrived.
Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia runs one of the earliest and most referenced district portraits; it is the single most searched district-level portrait in US search data. Its longevity shows a portrait can survive leadership changes when the community owns it.
Battelle for Kids maintains a public gallery of district portrait graphics, which is the fastest way to see how varied the visual expressions of the same core skills can be.
The three terms describe the same kind of framework, and the differences are choices of emphasis rather than substance. Portrait of a Graduate is the most common label and centers the end point: what a graduate demonstrates. Profile of a Graduate is an older synonym used interchangeably; Vermont’s framework, for example, appears under both names in national comparisons. Portrait of a Learner, the label Kentucky chose, deliberately widens the frame to every grade level, signaling that the competencies develop from elementary school onward rather than appearing in grade 12. Some systems also say Vision of a Graduate. If you encounter any of the four, read them as the same instrument: a named set of competencies a community expects its students to demonstrate.
You evidence Portrait of a Graduate skills with authentic student work collected over time, not with a new test. A skill like critical thinking or communication shows up in what students actually produce: the artifacts, performances, and reflections that accumulate across a K-12 career.
In practice, the evidence base for a portrait includes:
Student projects and performance tasks, where a skill is applied to real material rather than recalled
Written and recorded reflections, where students name the competency they used and assess their own growth
Cross-curricular work, because durable skills by definition appear across subjects, not inside one
Artifacts collected over time, so growth is visible as a progression rather than a single data point
Presentations and defenses of learning, where students present their evidence to an audience
The hard part is not generating this evidence. It already exists in classrooms. The hard part, as district leaders consistently report, is that the evidence is fragmented: it lives in individual classrooms, individual schools, and a patchwork of platforms, with no consistent way to organize it around the attributes. A superintendent asked to show the board how students are demonstrating six attributes that cannot answer from a gradebook, because gradebooks record courses, not competencies.
Districts solving this organize evidence around outcomes instead of tools: each student builds a portfolio in which artifacts and reflections are tagged to the portrait’s attributes, so a school or district view can be assembled from real work. Platforms such as Wakelet are used for exactly this, giving students a place to curate portfolio evidence against the attributes while giving leaders the aggregate visibility their boards and communities ask for. The method matters more than the tool: our guide to building student portfolios from K to 12 covers what to collect at each grade band and how to keep the evidence authentic.
A Portrait of a Graduate rubric takes one attribute and makes it observable: it pairs the attribute with concrete indicators and describes what student performance looks like at three or four levels, usually by grade band. North Carolina publishes rubrics and I Can statements for each of its seven durable skills, and Utah publishes competency model rubrics for its portrait; New York’s rubrics are expected to follow the July 2025 adoption as NYSED releases implementation guidance. For worked examples attribute by attribute, see our Portrait of a Graduate rubric examples from leading districts.
Creating a Portrait of a Graduate is a community design process, not a drafting exercise. The sequence Battelle for Kids pioneered, and that most state and district portraits have followed, runs like this:
Convene a representative design team of teachers, students, families, employers, higher education, and community partners. North Carolina’s statewide design teams worked over three months and drew on more than 120 educators for the implementation resources that followed.
Engage the wider community on one question: what should a graduate of this system know and be able to do? Vermont gathered input from more than 300 students, parents, educators, and community members over two years.
Draft a short list of competencies. Aim for a number people can remember; the statewide examples above run from six to seven, with Utah’s thirteen characteristics grouped under three themes.
Validate the draft with the groups who will live with it, especially students and employers.
Define observable indicators for each competency, by grade band, so the portrait can be taught and assessed rather than admired.
Align curriculum and assessment, mapping where each competency is already developed and where the gaps are.
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Plan the evidence layer from day one: decide where student work demonstrating each attribute will live, and how it will be visible to teachers, families, and leaders.
Step seven is the one most systems defer, and it is the source of most implementation pain later. A portrait without an evidence plan becomes a graphic.
The gap between adopting a portrait and living it is real, and naming the challenges honestly is more useful than pretending momentum solves them.
Work demonstrating the attributes exists but sits in classrooms and disconnected platforms, so nobody can see the whole picture. This is the most commonly reported operational gap.
District leaders want comparable evidence across schools without forcing every school to teach identically, and most reporting systems offer no middle ground.
Skills like empathy or learner agency resist scoring. States that publish rubrics and performance indicators, as North Carolina, Utah, and Vermont do, close part of this gap; states that do not leave every district to invent its own.
If the portrait arrives as a new documentation duty on top of existing ones, it fails. Districts that succeed surface evidence from work students already do.
A portrait raises expectations. Leaders are then asked to show progress on outcomes their data systems were never designed to capture.
Some commentators argue portraits risk becoming vague or subjective, trading academic precision for feel-good language; a January 2026 Education Next essay makes this case at length. The strongest answer to that criticism is specificity: named indicators, real rubrics, and visible student evidence.
The most useful portrait resources are the primary ones. Start here:
NYSED Portrait of a Graduate page and Need-to-Know documents: role-specific guidance for students, parents, educators, administrators, and board members (nysed.gov)
North Carolina Portrait of a Graduate resources: rubrics, I Can statements by grade band, performance tasks, a playbook, and a communications toolkit (dpi.nc.gov)
Utah Portrait of a Graduate: the Utah Talent MAP, competency exemplars, and competency model rubrics (schools.utah.gov)
Kentucky Portrait of a Learner: the state framework plus guidance for districts building their own (education.ky.gov)
Vermont Portrait of a Graduate with performance indicators (education.vermont.gov)
Battelle for Kids Portrait of a Graduate gallery: visual portraits from districts nationwide (battelleforkids.org)
If your district is starting its evidence layer, a portfolio template organized by attribute rather than by subject is the single most useful artifact to standardize. A free Wakelet collection template structured around your portrait’s attributes gives every student the same scaffold from day one.
A Portrait of a Graduate succeeds or stalls on evidence. If your district can already answer the question "show us students demonstrating these attributes," you are ahead of most. If it cannot, the fastest path is a portfolio system organized around the attributes themselves. See how districts use student digital portfolios to bring Portrait of a Graduate evidence into one visible, shareable place.
New York State Education Department: New York State Portrait of a Graduate; adoption by the Board of Regents, July 2025; the six attributes; Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education; Need-to-Know documents; NY Inspires (introduced November 2024); Graduation Measures initiative (2019). nysed.gov
BOCES of New York State: NY Inspires implementation timeline; full alignment for students entering grade 9 in 2029-30. boces.org
North Carolina Department of Public Instruction: North Carolina Portrait of a Graduate revealed, October 18, 2022; seven durable skills; classroom-ready resources including rubrics and I Can statements, August 2023; Skills for the Future initiative with Mooresville Graded School District, Iredell-Statesville Schools, Edgecombe County Public Schools, and Caldwell County Schools, September 2025. dpi.nc.gov
Utah State Board of Education: Portrait of a Graduate (Utah Talent MAP) approval, May 2019; Mastery, Autonomy, Purpose; 13 characteristics; competency model rubrics. schools.utah.gov
Kentucky Department of Education and Kentucky Board of Education: Kentucky Portrait of a Learner, adopted October 2022; voluntary framing; more than 140 districts with local portraits. education.ky.gov; nasbe.org
Education Week: More States Are Creating a Portrait of a Graduate, December 2023; 17 states; Kentucky, North Carolina, and Wyoming as recent adopters; Kentucky’s six components; AASA Portrait of a Graduate Academy launch, December 11, 2023. edweek.org
Vermont Agency of Education: Vermont Portrait of a Graduate; six attributes with key descriptors and performance indicators; development from 2017 with more than 300 contributors; proficiency-based graduation requirements. education.vermont.gov
Battelle for Kids: framework development with the EdLeader21 Network; support for hundreds of districts and state agencies; work in more than 40 states; joined AASA in July 2025; district survey data (69 percent moderate-to-high impact); Portrait of a Graduate gallery. battelleforkids.org
Farmingdale School District Portrait of a Graduate launch, via Patch community reporting. patch.com
CompetencyWorks (Aurora Institute) and Getting Smart: Iron County and Juab districts’ portraits predating the Utah statewide release. mastery.org
Education Next: Mis-Portraits of a Graduate, January 2026, cited as published criticism of portrait frameworks. educationnext.org