AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION – NYSED RELEASES PORTRAIT OF A GRADUATE
Spencer Buley, Reporter: The New York Inspires plan was introduced in 2024 to transform education. This week, the State Education Department presented its new vision for characteristics of a graduate. The presentation included critical and creative thinking at the forefront. Meghan Picciano, teacher at Southern Cayuga Junior High, says the science department has taken the initiative by using the concept of investigative thinking.
Meghan Picciano, Southern Cayuga Junior High: It’s not presenting content and memorizing. It’s, you are given these few pieces of information and now you have to figure out how they come together.
Buley: Picciano says that the transition has been challenging.
Picciano: Hopefully as they go on that will get easier when they start that younger. But when the kids first started that and they hadn’t had that in the younger grades, it was really very difficult for the teacher and the students.
Buley: The presentation is the next step in the creation of a new graduation framework. Spencer Buley. NCC News.
CAYUGA, N.Y. (NCC News) — The New York State Education Department (NYSED) has released its newest update to the “New York Inspires” plan to transform education.
The update includes a new list of characteristics that NYSED desires high school graduates to embody. The list is called the “Portrait of a Graduate” and was presented to the Board of Regents this week.
“It affirms that the diploma is not merely a certificate, but a testament to each graduate’s readiness to thrive in a complex and rapidly changing world,” Board of Regents Chancellor Lester Young said in the press release.
The presentation highlights the “whole student” who is academically prepared, a creative innovator, a critical thinker, an effective communicator, a global citizen, and reflective and future focused. Meghan Picciano, a teacher at Southern Cayuga Junior High, says she’s seen reflections of this framework in action.
“The whole science curriculum has changed tremendously,” she said. “It’s not presenting content and memorizing. It’s, you are given these few pieces of information and now you have to figure out how they come together.”
The outline serves as the newest building block for the development of new high school graduation measures. It will follow a two-year implementation plan that begins in the fall of 2025 and runs through the summer of 2027. The plan aims to establish new learning measures such as financial literacy and climate education.
The full release and presentation can be found at nysed.gov, and the state is welcoming feedback through the ThoughtExchange forum.