What skills should an 8th grader in Oak Park ideally graduate with?
Officials have finally decided.
In a reinvention of the district’s approach, officials put together a “portrait” of an 8th-grade graduate made up of eight “dimensions,” or core competencies, for students to achieve. They are aligned, as they have been, with state standards.
They are:
- Global Connector
- Powered by Literacy
- Creative Dreamer
- Holistically Well
- Digital Navigator
- Financially Savvy
- Career Explorer
- Change Agent
“There isn’t a blueprint for universal student achievement,” said Supt. Ushma Shah. “We are trying to do something that hasn’t been done before, using our community-driven Portrait as a roadmap. We’re excited to collaborate with our community partners, our families and staff to design a path forward that is innovative, inclusive, and reflective of our collective aspirations and values.”
Amanda Siegfried, senior director of communications and engagement, and Eboney Lofton, chief learning and innovation officer, said the dimensions were established after months of collecting more than 2,600 data points over 16 community-wide engagement sessions held in the spring. Officials also collected information from parents and staff through surveys.
“Our teacher design team really worked hard to make sure that the wording of each of these were powerful and really kind of resonated with the community and reflected what they said to us,” Lofton said.
Each dimension has clearly outlined standards that were honed throughout the process, they said. For example, “powered by literacy” originally focused solely on reading, but the final dimension also incorporated writing: “Graduates will apply research-based practices to read, analyze, evaluate and articulate information in order to make sense of, question and challenge the world around them.”
Lofton said writing was the “expression of students” being able to understand information and “share it with the world.”
According to Siegfried, the district realized being “academically prepared” was embedded throughout all of the dimensions and was viewed as “a foundational concept” for the portrait.
“While many portraits are aspirational, ours is entirely academic,” Siegfried said. “Student mastery of the portrait dimensions will be defined by the Illinois Learning Standards, which establish expectations for what all students should know and be able to do in each subject at each grade.”
This summer, the district will work on ensuring the portrait’s dimensions align with the Illinois Learning Standards, along with developing a “Year 1” plan for implementation, Siegfried said.
For the first year, the district will work with community partners to address student programming and also align “out-of-school” learning, such as clubs, to the established dimensions across all grade levels.
The district will also develop resources for families to continue to support learning outside of the classroom.
“It is also important to add that the portrait, we are thinking about it as something starting outside of school,” Shah said.
Shah added that looking at the “standards and learning experiences” outside of school allows more clarity inside the classroom because it “creates conversation and a framework” for engagement.
“It is not something to be implemented in the way we think of implementing something in schools like ‘how are you going to roll it out,” Shah said. “…To level the playing field in terms of access to opportunity and in terms of leveling the playing field to learning we need to start to leverage more strategically out of school times, because that is where the inequities actually start.”
Board Vice President Nancy Ross Dribin said the dimensions are “great aspects of a graduate,” but added that the district needs to express how dimensions will be used to look at district standards.
“As you are rolling it out, getting across ‘these are great. What are we using these for?’ How is this organizing what we are doing,” Dribin said. “You have already articulated that in pieces so I think making sure you have a cohesive picture of what this looks like is going to be one of the key points.”
New structures could potentially form as the portrait becomes a “beginning framework” to figure out what the “next steps look like,” Shah said.
Update: July 16, 2024: This article was updated to clarify that the district aligns with state standards. It also includes a new quote from Supt. Ushma Shah that came after publication.