PORTRAIT OF A MODERN HIGH SCHOOL Graduate

By Rob Miller, Superintendent of Bixby Public Schools

In a prescient quote attributed to John Dewey over a century ago, he proposed, “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.” With access to an ever-expanding knowledge base and generative AI literally at the fingertips of today’s youth, the urgency of evolving our current teaching and learning systems to meet modern learners’ needs has never been more significant.

There has been a recent push for states to better define what it means to be a successful graduate. This process seeks to move the definition beyond traditional expectations related to seat time and course requirements to a more fluid description with goals to influence education policy, often called a portrait or profile of a graduate.

According to these new precepts, students should leave high school with agreed-upon skills, such as creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, teamwork, student agency, and civic engagement. Many employers seek these qualities and soft skills to respond to America’s rapidly changing work landscape.

At the root of this discussion are a few simple yet paradoxically complex questions for educators and policymakers:

■ What does it mean to be an educated person today?

■ What are the critical skills, knowledge, attributes, and mindsets that high school graduates possess?

■ What are the appropriate roles and responsibilities of the teacher?

■  How must the structure, function, and design of schools and learning environments change?

With the continuing growth of industrial automation, robotics, and innovative technologies, we must do all we can to prepare students for the jobs of tomorrow. Our society’s economic engine depends on productive and engaged citizens. The role of education should be to create a knowledgeable and engaged citizenry ready to exercise meaningful roles in our world. Our current framework restricts students’ options and limits schools’ ability to prepare them for a future world of work that none of them fully understand.

The best way to predict the future is to help create it.

The following case studies feature hypothetical students representing future-ready students and schools. These students need flexibility and autonomy to pursue their aims, not just a series of arbitrary hurdles based on a hundred-year-old educational model.