What are we designing education for?

That question should sit at the center of every serious conversation about the future of education in California. It is especially urgent now, as artificial intelligence, economic volatility, political divisions, and rapid technological change are reshaping the world young people are preparing to enter.

For too long, our education system has relied on inherited measures of success: grades, test scores, credits, course completion and graduation rates. These measures matter, but they are incomplete. They tell us something about whether students have moved through the system. They tell us far less about whether students are prepared to navigate the world beyond it.

Across California, more districts are recognizing this gap. They are asking a deeper question: What do we actually want students to know, be able to do and become by the time they graduate?

That is the question behind a Portrait of a Learner.

A Portrait of a Learner, sometimes called a Portrait of a Graduate, is a community-developed vision for student success. It names the durable skills, mindsets and competencies young people need to thrive: communication, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, self-direction, resilience, civic responsibility and the ability to keep learning in a changing world.

Across the state, well over 100 districts have engaged their communities to create a portrait. Those districts serve 35 percent of our 5.8 million students.

This work is not a distraction from academic achievement. It is a more complete definition of it.

The need for that broader definition is becoming harder to ignore. In her first meeting as Chair of the University of California Board of Regents, Dr. María Anguiano laid out four priorities for the year, one of them was “redefining college readiness.” She specifically asks, “What knowledge, skills, and experiences best prepare students for success at UC and beyond?” Chair Anguiano has commissioned a task force of the UC Academic Senate to review the A-G requirements, with a report expected to the regents by June 2027.

For more on Dr. Anguiano’s thought leadership, see a series of blog posts for the College Futures Foundation, including one called, “What Are We Designing Education For?” Her challenge is aimed largely at postsecondary education, but it applies just as powerfully to K-12. If higher education and the workforce are beginning to question seat-time-based credentials, narrow transcripts and inherited definitions of readiness, then K-12 systems must also ask whether we are preparing students for the future or for the structures of the past.

Other major institutions are moving in the same direction. ETS and the Carnegie Foundation, two organizations that have helped to define public education as we know it, have partnered on Skills for the Future, an effort to develop new ways of measuring durable skills such as collaboration, communication and critical thinking. The Carnegie Foundation helped create the Carnegie Unit. ETS helped define an era of standardized assessment. When institutions like these begin investing in new ways to recognize learning, the signal is clear: the field is shifting.

California should help lead that shift.

The State Board of Education’s recent adoption of a Portrait of a Learner was an important step. It does not create a mandate for districts, but rather a policy framework that will inform future SBE decisions about curriculum, assessment, and accountability. The SBE acknowledged that the power of a portrait comes from local ownership. Communities need to define, in their own words, the outcomes they want for their young people. But the SBE’s action affirmed something important: student success must be understood more broadly than the metrics we have historically used to measure it.

For districts, the Portrait is not the end product. It is the starting point.

A well-designed Portrait can guide strategic planning, instructional design, assessment, career pathways, community partnerships, organizational culture, and accountability. It can help a district move from a list of disconnected initiatives to a coherent vision of what learning should produce. It can also create the conditions for deeper conversations with families, educators, students and employers about what readiness really means. Students themselves should be at the center of every conversation.

A risk is that portraits can become mere posters on the wall, with limited potential to change professional practice or student outcomes. That is why implementation matters. A portrait only becomes powerful when it is translated into learning experiences, progressions, performance assessments and evidence of student growth.

If we say students should be collaborators, where do they practice collaboration? If we say they should be critical thinkers, what kinds of problems are they asked to solve? If we say they should be self-directed learners, where do they make meaningful choices, reflect on progress and revise their work? If we say students should be ready for a changing world, how do we know?

These are design questions. And they are exactly the questions that dozens of California districts are asking, including those participating in the newly funded Secondary School Redesign Pilot.

The future of education will not be shaped only by new technologies, new assessments or new graduation requirements. It will be shaped by whether we are clear about the human outcomes we want those systems to serve. And, it will succeed only if we create the conditions for innovations and proven practices to take root, spread, and ultimately become the new normal.

Before districts redesign schedules, pathways, assessments or accountability systems, they should begin with purpose. They should begin by asking what kind of learners, leaders and community members young people need to become.

Roman Stearns is the founder and executive director of Scaling Student Success, a California partnership that has built a statewide community among school districts with a Portrait of a Learner. In addition to hosting a community of practice, study tours, and other opportunities for educators to learn with and from one another, Scaling Student Success is the organizer of the Portrait of a Learner IGNITE 2026 Summit in San Jose from Sept. 27-29. Learn more at scalingstudentsuccess.org/events/#ignite-2026-summit.