A Portrait of a Graduate

When Tamesha Webb, Ed.M.’18, Ed.L.D.’26, began brainstorming the focus of her Ed.L.D capstone project, she got some key advice from a supervisor at Uniondale Union Free School District on Long Island, where she was doing her residency: As someone who's aspiring to be a superintendent, you want to make sure that this project is going to translate to something a superintendent would be thinking about — and doing. 

For Webb, one of this year’s Ed.L.D. Commencement marshals, that “something” turned out to be portrait of a graduate, an outline of the skills and competencies that a state or district wants its students to have by the time they graduate high school. Skills like being able to think critically and articulate ideas clearly. “It felt very spot on, timely, and relevant for the moment,” Webb says, “and what district leaders are talking about.”

Uniondale was already in the process of working on their outline after the state of New York mandated that all districts create portraits. Webb decided to focus her research on the next phase — what it would take to move from a draft list of skills to actual practice. As she wrote in her capstone, “Many districts struggle to translate these aspirational visions into daily classroom instruction.” 

Just prior to Commencement, Webb, a current member of the HGSE Alumni Council and past Intellectual Contribution Award recipient, talked about her initial introduction to portraits, how project-based learning fits into this work, and why she believes we lost the recipes in education.

First, what is portrait of a graduate?
What a portrait of a graduate framework really tries to highlight is a shift from just solely focusing on mastering content to cultivating transferable skills. So, the critical thinking, the collaboration, the creativity, the agency. Before it was more content focused: We need to make sure kids are literate in ELA and in math and know their history facts and scientific experiment steps. With portraits, it's what are the skills that kids need to know that can transfer in different areas?

Was portrait of a graduate something you knew about before you started your residency?
I had a sense of what it was because I had the privilege of serving as a teaching fellow in 2024 for Patrick Tutwiler, who was then the secretary of education in Massachusetts. At the time, Massachusetts was preparing to vote on whether they wanted to do away with the testing requirement for high school graduation. We were having conversations around, well, if we get rid of the testing requirements, districts will be charged with outlining the requirements to graduate. And so that was the first time that I had gotten introduced to this idea of the portrait of a graduate and it helped me when I transitioned into residency. I feel like the work I did in residency was part two. It’s like, okay, so you have your portrait of a graduate outlined, you have these beautiful graphs and frameworks on your website, but what does it mean to see this in action? How are you measuring it? What does it look like in the classroom? That is the work that I was leading in Uniondale.

What did you find doing this work?
The findings show that it’s not enough for schools to simply name the skills they want students to have — they also need a clear plan for how those skills will be taught and experienced in classrooms every day. District and school leaders must put strong systems in place, support teachers through training and collaboration, and ensure everyone is working toward the same goals. Ultimately, a portrait of a graduate only has real value if it is reflected in students’ daily learning experiences, not just written as an idea on paper.

One way to do this, you found, is through projects?
The theory that I tested is, can we leverage project-based learning to implement portrait of a graduate competencies? And yes, there is a lot of research that project-based learning works and that when you are using project-based learning as your instructional practice, it kind of sets you up to hit all of the targets that are usually commonly outlined in a district’s portrait of a graduate.

And that may require educators to shift their thinking, correct? 
This transition to preparing educators to lead instruction that’s really hitting on portrait of a graduate is going to require professional development. If it’s a change in their instructional practice, teachers are going to have to be coached. They're going to have to be trained. They're going to have to be prepared for this shift. … And that’s where leaders come into play, but it's not going to be easy work at any level. In order for us to really make this happen, it's going to require change at every level of the system.

You mentioned in your capstone, From Portrait to Practice: Operationalizing a District’s Portrait of a Graduate Through Project-Based Learning and Collaborative Teacher Design, that some portraits feature skills that were once considered important but fell out of favor.
I took a class at HGSE with [Adjunct Lecturer] Linda Nathan, and she often said, “there's nothing new in education.” And I think that is so true. Here we are implementing mandates for things that we used to do. I sometimes joke with colleagues that at some point we lost the recipes. The recipes weren’t passed down. I remember when I was in middle school, I took a class called Home Economics and half of the year was us learning to cook and sew. And the other half of the year was about personal finance. We learned how to balance checkbooks and write checks, and kids don’t have those courses anymore. But now we see them slowly being brought back because the tide is turning. As of next school year, in New York state, sixth through 12th grade students will take financial literacy courses and a climate science class. And in the following year, K–5 will have to have those classes implemented in their curriculum. But I’m like, we used to do those classes. We just lost the recipes somewhere along the way.

You’ve talked about equity as a concern when districts create portraits. In what way?
My concern is that when each district or state defines its own portrait of a graduate, students may not all be held to the same expectations. This can lead to inequities where some students have access to richer, more future-ready learning experiences than others. A possible solution is to establish a shared set of core competencies or a broader guiding framework, such as a national portrait of a graduate, while still allowing districts to adapt it to their local context, similar to what New York has done. This helps ensure that all students, regardless of where they live, are being prepared with the skills they need and have access to meaningful learning opportunities, while still honoring community priorities and values. It is also critical to provide districts with the necessary resources — especially financial support — so they can implement this work in equitable and sustainable ways.

As you look back on the past year, what do you hope your residency site takes away from your time with them?
What I hope the Uniondale Union Free School District takes away from my time there, more than anything, is that they are truly ahead of the game and already doing incredible work in service of students — especially those who are too often marginalized and whose brilliance is sometimes underestimated. The educators in this district should be proud of the work they are leading.

What is the biggest thing you learned during your time in the Ed.L.D. Program?
The biggest thing I learned is that to truly understand systems and system-level change, you first have to understand those key concepts within yourself. Clear vision, values, intentionality, and alignment all have to be right within you as a person and as a leader before you can effectively build and lead them within any organization. There has to be internal coherence within yourself before you can lead coherence across a system.

What's next?
After graduation, I plan to continue serving as a district-level leader in curriculum and instruction, with the goal of becoming a superintendent and leading transformational, system-wide work that advances equitable outcomes for all students. Home for me is Long Island, which is where I have been since the start of my residency. Ideally, I would love to stay here; however, I am open to leading wherever my faith calls me to be.