Portrait of a Graduate in Practice (NGLC)

NGLC profiles five districts that have implemented a Portrait of a Graduate (PoG) framework — a community-derived vision of "the skills, competencies, and traits students need to succeed in college, careers, and life."

NGLC's domain structure

NGLC organizes PoG competencies into four domains:

  1. Content Knowledge
  2. Creative Know How
  3. Habits of Success
  4. Wayfinding Abilities

Profiled districts

District State
Bullitt County Public Schools Kentucky
Lindsay Unified School District California
Northern Cass School District North Dakota
Da Vinci Schools California
Kettle Moraine School District Wisconsin

These are mentioned but not deeply profiled here; each could become its own entity page if a future source provides more detail on their parent-reporting mechanics.

Five district Portrait of a Graduate framework covers shown side-by-side: Bullitt County, Lindsay USD, Northern Cass, Da Vinci, and Kettle Moraine The five profiled districts' PoG framework graphics, side-by-side. Visual texture for how widely the form varies (compass, wheel, multi-page strategic doc) while the underlying domain structure converges. Source: NGLC, "Portrait of a Graduate in Practice".

Common competencies across the profiles

Communication, critical thinking, collaboration, problem-solving, adaptability, agency / self-direction, accountability.

How progress is measured and reported — what's missing

The page mentions "projects, presentations, and performance-based assessments" and "authentic examples of student work," along with grade-level indicators and skill continuums tracking elementary through high school. It also mentions personalized learning plans, advisory systems, and competency-based grading.

It does not name:

  • Specific digital portfolio platforms or vendors.
  • Concrete parent-facing reporting tools or dashboards.
  • How a parent at Bullitt County (or any profiled district) actually receives a competency status update.

Significance

PoG is one of the few mainstream frames that explicitly translates "achievement" into real-world capacities (college, career, life) rather than score percentiles. But the practical execution gap — how a parent learns where their kid stands on "Wayfinding Abilities" — is underdeveloped in NGLC's public framing.

Contrast with ACT WorkKeys / NCRC, which makes the score-to-real-world translation extremely literal (your skills cover X% of jobs) but only at the post-secondary entry point.

Follow-ups

  • District-level PoG progress reports that describe the parent-reporting side concretely (the framework side is well-documented; district-level parent-reporting mechanics are not).
  • Adjacent vendors not yet profiled: Wayfinder, Defined Learning, Unrulr, Panorama Education, CAE. (SpacesEDU is covered in its own page.)