Opinion
School & District Management Opinion

It’s Time to Update Your Graduate Profile - Here’s How

By Tom Vander Ark — April 20, 2017 1 min read
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The Partnership for 21st Century Skills was formed by business and education leaders in 2002 to build support for learning outcomes relevant to the new economy particularly critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration.

After a decade leading P21, Ken Kay launched EdLeader21 to provide implementation support to district leaders in the form of a professional learning community. More than 180 districts and schools are members

In March, EdLeader21 launched the Profile of a Graduate campaign (#profileofagraduate). The new website includes a gallery of adopted profiles and an implementation guide for creating your own. In our latest podcast, Ken sat down with me to explain more about this campaign and how schools can join.

Podcast Highlights

“We want at least 1,000 communities to sign up and develop a graduate profile in the next two years,” said Kay.

Some districts engage the whole community. Virginia Beach City Public Schools, which started this process a decade ago, gathered 1000 community members to ratify their updated profile. Other districts gather an advisory group that represents community, said Kay, and many districts include parents and students in the process.

The process creates direction, not another initiative, said Kay. It will create common definitions for skills like creativity. The process often concludes with defining competencies and performance tasks that allow students to demonstrate those competencies.

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The opinions expressed in Vander Ark on Innovation are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.