Bring New York's Portrait of a Graduate to Life

The New York State Department of Education recently presented the New York State Portrait of a Graduate, signaling a shift toward preparing students with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed for college, career, and life. Districts in New York are beginning to align instruction, assessment, and learning experiences with this vision so students can demonstrate authentic evidence of the New York Portrait of a Graduate competencies.

SpacesEDU supports Portrait of a Graduate in New York by helping New York districts take the New York State Portrait of a Graduate from poster to effective implementation. We help districts develop a custom Portfolio Template aligned with their competencies that follows students K-12 and beyond. Students document multimedia evidence of their learning and competency development over their K-12 journey and can share it in their defense of learning and externally for job and college applications. Stakeholders gain visibility into how students are progressing toward their Portrait of a Graduate competencies with comprehensive district-wide reports.

New York school districts are implementing performance-based assessment to meet the changing demands of the K-12 education system. Traditional assessment methods and students advancing based on seat time are no longer meeting the goals of today’s education system or students’ needs. In response to the shift, New York is adopting performance-based assessment to ensure that all students have the opportunity to demonstrate what they know and progress when they’re ready.

SpacesEDU supports performance-based assessment in New York through easy-to-use multimedia ePortfolios and comprehensive performance-based assessment and reporting tools that help educators streamline their workflows and provide personalized, learner-centered education at scale.

Our performance-based assessment and reporting tools allow educators to quickly tag evidence of learning to New York Learning Standards, view proficiency at a glance for individual students and at the classroom level, provide multimedia feedback to meet the needs of all learners, and leverage a visual performance-based report card. Students can quickly upload multimedia evidence of work-based learning to their ePortfolio to highlight evidence of growth, and educators can create customizable, digital performance-based learning environments to support personalized learning pathways, including a Class Space, Group Spaces for collaboration, and 1:1 Spaces for IEPs, goal setting, and more.

In addition to leveraging SpacesEDU for Portrait of a Graduate implementation and performance-based assessment, school districts across the United States are using SpacesEDU to support work-based learning and career-readiness with an ePortfolio that showcases evidence of students’ industry-standard skills and work products. With SpacesEDU, schools districts are inviting work-based learning industry partners to engage and give students direct career skills feedback, providing visibility into student work and a clear path to growth for students. Additionally, educators tag students’ work-based learning projects to O*NET skills and standards and leverage a progress report to view learning growth and gaps.

We’ve spent the past 18 years working with school districts to meet the goals outlined in their strategic plans, and have defined a proven roll-out and implementation strategy that engages all relevant stakeholders.

When a New York school district decides to work with us, they will partner with a dedicated Partner Success Specialist to define their goals for Portrait of a Graduate, performance-based assessment, and work-based learning documentation using SpacesEDU, create custom training and communication plans, and ensure successful adoption of the software.

We work with each New York district to tailor their strategy, including offering a proof of concept term, to effectively evaluate the software for your use case and unique population of students.