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The Graduate Portrait

Why have a Graduate Portrait?

At the center of an educational vision is the Graduate Portrait—a description of the community’s aspirations for its young people. Our Graduate Portrait is courageous, informed by community values and foresight about likely trends our students may encounter. It describes the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and mindsets that Santa Clara Unified School District’s students need to thrive in life and career.

While the Graduate Portrait is aspirational*, our commitment is to support every student in working toward realizing its elements to the best of their ability. The aspirations are bold, to catalyze the system changes needed to improve student outcomes. Our Graduate Portrait will also guide adult actions and decisions, aligning leadership, management, teaching and learning, and resource allocations for student success. Our objective is to prepare each student for life beyond high school by supporting them in reaching their full potential. We believe that all of the Graduate Portrait elements are important for ensuring that students thrive in the increasingly diverse environment in which they will live.

The following Graduate Portrait elements have been developed through iterative cycles of input, feedback, and revision, as illustrated in the roadmap.

Graduate Portrait Elements

Graduate Diagram

Graduation Portrait Implications

Successful implementation of our Graduate Portrait will require collective effort, some of which will be clear immediately, and some of which may be more emergent. The following three areas of focus will accelerate the comprehensive development of the Graduate Portrait.

Stories from the Future