In diverse settings around the globe, forward-thinking education leaders are engaging their communities in provocative discussions about the future of learning. Gathering around conference tables and whiteboards, groups of students, educators, parents, and business leaders are collaborating to craft bold new visions of what students should know and be able to do by the time they graduate.

The resulting visions go by many names, including Portrait of a Graduate, Learner Profile, and Life-Ready Graduate. They share  an emphasis on key competencies that students need to be ready for post-secondary education, careers, and global citizenship. Creating a shared vision of student success provides a school system with a new North Star — guiding the direction of teaching, learning, and leadership. 

For leaders, this nascent movement brings both opportunities and challenges. Co-author Ken Kay and I interviewed more than 200 education leaders engaged in this work as research for Redefining Student Success: Building a New Vision to Transform Leading, Teaching, and Learning. Although graduate profiles first emerged in the United States, we found education leaders from India to South America to Armenia launching similar conversations in their communities. Collectively, they emphasize the importance of listening to diverse perspectives, building consensus, setting priorities, and being willing to innovate if existing systems are out of sync with new visions. 

The superintendent of a large urban school district in the United States underscored another commonality of this movement: an emphasis on equity. A graduate profile is a community’s promise that all students will be prepared to follow their dreams. “Our students should be able to go to college, to work, to the military—it’s their choice,” the superintendent told us. “But they all will be prepared. All means all.” 

Cultivating a “Green Light Culture”

Once a community has agreed on its graduate profile, the work of implementation begins. This requires a willingness to ask hard questions and challenge the status quo. What learning experiences do students need at different ages to help them develop desired competencies? How will progress be assessed? How can learning be personalized to enable students to pursue their own interests? How will teachers expand their strategies to meet new learning goals?

A goal shared by many communities is for students to become creative problem solvers, prepared to tackle whatever challenges they face in the future. This won’t happen in school systems that emphasize content memorization and compliance. To bring their problem-solving vision to life, leaders need to empower their teams to rethink everything from curriculum and assessment to professional development and the use of resources. 

One instructional leader described her school system’s portrait of a graduate as “our essential why. With that in place, we have a staff willing to take risks and try new strategies,” such as teacher-led professional development and a well-defined progression of competencies that all students need to develop. “It’s not buy-in,” she emphasized. “It’s believe-in.”

In school systems that are making progress toward their vision, leaders create what my co-author and I describe as a “green light culture.” This means that strategies potentially transforming  teaching and learning are valued and encouraged and barriers to collaboration are removed, good ideas are shared, and “failures” are reframed as learning opportunities . The green light reaches everyone in the system—from the superintendent and building leaders to teachers, students, families, and extended community members. 

But there’s an important caution — Cultivating a culture of innovation doesn’t mean giving the green light to every wild idea that comes along. That can lead to distraction or initiative overload. For education leaders, the challenge is to encourage experimentation that has the potential to advance your community’s shared vision.

Bringing the Vision to Life

Many school systems are in the early stages of adopting alternatives to standardized tests to assess and report on student growth toward new goals. These include portfolios, student-led conferences, narrative transcripts, and capstone projects, all engaging  students in reflecting on their learning.

To be sure, it will take time and collective effort to transform traditional assessment systems. Yet forward-thinking leaders are already recognizing the power of storytelling to communicate how education is changing to prepare students for the future better . They collect and share concrete examples of students as creative problem solvers and engaged global citizens. 

For example, in a community that values global citizenship, elementary students have created tiny lending libraries in neighborhoods they identified as “book deserts” and have advocated for literacy as a civil right. High school students concerned about climate change are helping in developing a new curriculum focused on environmental justice—a goal that aligns with their school system’s graduate profile. Middle schoolers in a school system that values critical thinking have partnered with scientists to identify the causes of pollution in a local lake and advocated for policymakers to invest in remediation efforts. 

Across these and many more examples, students are demonstrating what they know and can do by creating products and solutions that have real value.  They are building the capacity to succeed as lifelong learners, in future careers, and as engaged citizens.  Their compelling stories put a human face on school transformation, helping to build momentum for change.  

In many ways, the pandemic has underscored the importance of the 21st-century  skills educators have advocated  for the past two decades. If students have to confront a future challenge of this scale, will they be ready? Will they know how to collaborate with experts and communicate across cultures? Will they be able to generate novel solutions, analyze results, and make critical decisions? Will they have the empathy to understand other perspectives and the resilience to adapt to change? 

These are urgent questions for school leaders to consider as they guide their educational systems into the uncertain future. If recent examples are any indication, today’s students are up to the challenge.