Parents need to know that Portrait of a Graduate is a national program created by an Ohio-based company called Battelle for Kids. Portrait of a Graduate is being used to fundamentally transform the purpose of US education.
It shifts curriculum, assessment, school accountability, and data collection away from academics and toward Social and Emotional Learning (SEL).
During a school board meeting in SAU16/Exeter, they hired 2Revolutions to help them develop their Portrait of a Graduate.
Battelle for Kids was created by Battelle, an applied science and technology company that uses technology to track behaviors. The program was incentivized through policies and grants in the 2015 federal education law the Every Student Succeeds Act ESSA (which replaced No Child Left Behind).
These policies are an extension of Common Core reforms. Some of Battelle’s strategic partners that direct states’ adoption of Portrait of a Graduate are CASEL, Aurora Institute, ExcelinEd and KnowledgeWorks. These companies are working towards mass data collection of children’s values, attitudes and behaviors with a company called the Data Quality Campaign.
The Data Quality Campaign was instrumental in developing states’ State Longitudinal Data Systems. So, Portrait of a Graduate is, essentially, a program to expand New Hampshire’s State Longitudinal Data System, and start tracking children into all sorts of social services including health services and into the workforce. In the final scheme of things, Portrait of a Graduate is the backbone for Social Credit Scoring and ESG scores for children.
New Hampshire
As the leader in implementing competency education, New Hampshire recognized the need for a state data system that was better equipped to communicate with district systems and provide necessary supports. The Initiative for School Empowerment and Excellence reduces the burden on schools and gives information back to schools based on regularly collected data to encourage student achievement through rigorous data use and analysis.
By encouraging states to develop data systems with complete information, the Data Quality Campaign has been essential to the first step of creating meaningful data systems across the country. With data collection getting better and better, the next step must address the use of this data. Collection and compliance alone have not and will not support students in reaching their full potential.
KnowledgeWorks is a Gates-funded organization (also based in Ohio) that the State Boards of Education paid to facilitate the districts’ adoption of Battelle’s SEL framework. (Pilot programs and legislation for Competency-Based Education will align “competencies” to those in Portrait of a Graduate) Local teachers are brought into the process to determine competencies, but only for show. In actuality, they are being shifted into becoming facilitators of the SEL system, and, over time, the entire system will be geared toward SEL.
Here are some resources:
• Battelle’s website where they show that they are driving the work of states and districts across the US:
https://portraitofagraduate.org/
• KnowledgeWorks’ website explains Portrait of a Graduate in Utah:
**KnowledgeWorks’ explains their work in New Hampshire: Policy Conditions in Action: Comprehensive Supports for Educators and Leaders in New Hampshire. In 2011, a group of postsecondary leaders in New Hampshire formed the IHE Network to influence policymakers and engage practitioners to promote innovative programs and policies that link educator preparation, new educator induction and ongoing professional development in the state.
Leadership
- President – Kristen Downey, Upper Valley Educators Institute
- Vice President – Nick Marks, Granite State College
- Secretary – Dale Boyle, Franklin Pierce University
- Treasurer – Nick Marks, Granite State College
https://knowledgeworks.org/resources/nh-comprehensive-supports-educators-leaders/
KnowledgeWorks’ refers to the PACE assessments. The performance assessment for Competencies:
https://knowledgeworks.org/resources/la-nh-innovative-assessment-pilot/ At the beginning of the video, you will hear from Scott Marion who was a consultant for the Manchester schools when they were revising their local academic standards. Those standards when revealed were highly criticized by parents in the district for being almost exactly the same as Common Core.
https://www.girardatlarge.com/blog/2014/06/29/amherst-parent-confronts-mht-academic-standards-consultant/
The Pioneer Institute reported on Scott Marion’s association to the standardized testing industry as the Associate Director of the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment. This was a cash cow for the testing industry and bad news for Massachusetts since they once developed and used the best academic standards and testing in the country. But since Common Core, that is no longer the case :
https://pioneerinstitute.org/blog/rip-parcc/
Performance Assessment of Competency Education:
https://www.education.nh.gov/who-we-are/division-of-learner-support/bureau-of-instructional-support/performance-assessment-for-competency-education
• KnowledgeWorks’ explains that they are replacing academics with competency-based learning which they see mirroring the “anti-racist” work of Marxist Ibram X. Kendi:
• KnowledgeWorks says our Constitution is racist and that education has to fix that:
• Utah State School Office of Education employee is in this Aurora Institute video explaining her work with KnowledgeWorks and Utah teachers on Portrait of a Graduate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK3prQedfe4
• In the Utah State School Board’s (USBE) February 2021 Guide to Education Flexibility, they give Utah’s historic overview of the adoption of Portrait of a Graduate. Pages 1-59 detail the USBE’s work with ExcelinEd to get Utah to start replacing state standards with global competencies through a whole new system of education called Global Competency-Based Ed system. Pages 60-87 detail the next shift into Portrait of a Graduate:
• On page 19 of this Utah State School Board document, you will see a slide graphic that talks about “Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes, Values, Competencies and **Action**.” This means they want kids to be competent to “take action” for Social Justice. This is a graphic that the Board has used to sell Utah on Portrait of a Graduate:
• Where did that graphic come from? It came from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The OECD runs the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and they are big-data partners of UNESCO. PISA has been used to drive nations and states into the adoption of assessments for Social Emotional Learning (values, attitudes and behaviors). In fact, they drive the entire market for assessment and have used technology reforms and policies to get states using online, computer-adaptive curriculum embedded with SEL assessments. In the OECD’s 2016 white paper, Global Competency for an Inclusive World, they say,
“The skills, attitudes and values that shape human behaviour should be rethought, to counter the discriminatory behaviours picked up at school and in the family.”
On page 2, you can find that quote and the same graphic that the Utah State School Board is using.
• Panorama Education’s website shows how they use Portrait of a Graduate to build their behavioral surveys and data collection around. (Panorama was founded by US AG Merrick Garland’s son-in-law….the reason that Garland went after parents that oppose Critical Race Theory at local school boards).
This Forbes article explains how Panorama seeks to use its surveys and education initiatives to advance the tenets of Critical Race Theory:
What schools are engaged in this in New Hampshire?
SAU 40-Milford https://portraitofagraduate.org/portrait-gallery/portrait-gallery-item/sau-40-milford-school-district-(new-hampshire)
https://mhs.milfordk12.org/apps/pages/PoS-Portrait-of-a-Graduate
SAU 16
https://www.2revolutions.net/stories/a-celebration-of-learning
Franklin Schools:
https://www.nextgenlearning.org/articles/portrait-of-the-graduate-franklin-new-hampshire
From New Hampshire Learning Initiative:
https://nhlearninginitiative.org/category/portrait-of-a-graduate/
From Reaching Higher NH: https://reachinghighernh.org/2021/06/14/podcast-ready-set-graduate/
WATCH for the NEXT article that shows how the CDC is involved in pushing CRT and SEL.
| Natalie Cline from Utah Contributed to this Articles
