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What Does New York's Portrait of a Graduate Mean for Your District?
Six attributes, and a diploma being rebuilt around them. The timeline is short, and it favors districts that move early.
New York has adopted a Portrait of a Graduate. The Board of Regents named six attributes it wants every graduate to carry into the world. Academically Prepared. Creative Innovator. Critical Thinker. Effective Communicator. Global Citizen. Reflective and Future Focused. This time, the state did more than name them. It is rebuilding what a New York diploma means around them.
What New York Did
The Board of Regents adopted the Portrait of a Graduate as the guiding framework for graduation, part of its NY Inspires plan. Six attributes, all grounded in Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education. Over time, it moves New York toward a single diploma and away from the Regents exam model that defined diplomas for generations.
You can read the full Portrait of a Graduate and its six attributes on the New York State Education Department's site.
What It Means for Your District
First, if your district already has a Portrait or a profile, it still counts. The state's six attributes and your local language will overlap in most places, and a crosswalk shows exactly where.
Second, the implementation timeline is short, and it favors districts that move early. Building a credible way to show these attributes takes years. The district that starts while the target is still forming will be ready when it arrives.
Third, the state has named what a graduate should demonstrate, but not yet how. There is no Regents exam waiting to measure a Global Citizen or a Reflective and Future-Focused thinker. That gap is the hardest and most immediate question a New York leader faces right now.
The Part That Matters Now
New York has settled what a graduate should be. What no one has settled yet is how a district will show it. That is the work in front of every New York district now. It is also the work we built ProSolve to take on, so a district can meet the state's target in its own words and prove students are actually getting there.
So set New York's six attributes beside what your district already does. Most of it will be familiar. The question still waiting is how you would show a board, or the state, that a student truly demonstrates them.
What would you want to show?
Dr. Michelle Ament
Dr. Michelle Ament is a national voice for reimagining learning and leadership in the Intelligence Age. She spent 30 years inside K-12 as a classroom teacher and district administrator. As ProSolve's Chief Academic Officer, she helps districts measure, report on, and improve the human skills the workforce is asking for. Michelle is Co-President of the Human Intelligence Movement and host of Unscripted Intelligence.
