Thursday, October 1, 2026
Why did you go into education? Ask any teacher, any principal, any school board member, and the answer almost always begins the same way: I wanted to make a difference.
But making a difference is harder than we expected. Along the way, there are obstacles we never anticipated and challenges that can seem insurmountable. And yet, isn’t it our job to figure out how to make education work for every student entrusted to us? It is a Herculean task, but helping each child find success is the most rewarding job there is.
Success no longer has one standard definition, nor one pathway. Horace Mann, the father of American public schools, called education “the great equalizer.” If that’s true, it falls to school districts to widen the path, to give students the opportunity to find their own way forward, equipped with the tools to be safe, happy and productive members of their communities.
That work starts with an honest question: Are we preparing students for the world we grew up in, or the world they will inherit?
The criteria we have long used to measure student success, standardized tests, grades and seat time, are more than 50 years old. In that half-century, the world has been utterly transformed. Today’s graduates will compete, collaborate and build careers in an economy reshaped by automation, artificial intelligence and constant change.
Technical knowledge will always matter, but research is increasingly clear that technical knowledge alone isn’t enough. According to America Succeeds, a national nonprofit that studies the skills employers demand, eight of the 10 most sought-after skills in over 80 million job postings were durable skills, not technical ones. Skills such as communication, collaboration, adaptability, analytical thinking and empathy account for roughly 85 percent of job success, far outweighing narrow technical expertise on its own.
Employers across industries consistently report the same gap: They need graduates who can think analytically, work with others, adapt under pressure, and understand not just how they feel, but how they make others feel. That is emotional intelligence, and it is no longer a “nice to have.” It is foundational.
That’s why school districts across the country, including ours, are embracing a new framework known as Portrait of a Graduate. Rather than replacing academic rigor, Portrait of a Graduate builds on it by asking, alongside the question of what students should know, the equally important question of what they should be able to do with that knowledge. It isn’t a narrowing of the path forward. It is a widening of the doors of opportunity.
Some critics argue that this work distracts from academics, that time spent on “durable” skills is time taken from math, reading and content mastery. I understand the concern, and I take it seriously, but I respectfully disagree with the premise because this isn’t an either/or. Portrait of a Graduate doesn’t compete with academic learning; it strengthens it, embedding skills like collaboration and analytical thinking directly into the rigorous coursework our students already engage in every day. We aren’t lowering the bar. We are raising it in more dimensions than a test score can capture.
That’s why our Board of Education has approved three interconnected commitments for our district: Portrait of a Graduate, an Artificial Intelligence Mission & Vision, and a definition of deep learning. These weren’t developed in isolation. They emerged from committees of educators, administrators, parents and students working together to answer one essential question: What do we want our graduates to know and be able to do when they leave our high school?
This roadmap will guide every decision we make from here forward, from how we provide professional development for our staff to how we design our classrooms, how we use emerging technologies responsibly, and how we measure what truly matters. It reflects our belief that academic excellence and emotional intelligence are not competing priorities, but partners in preparing students for a future none of us can fully predict.
We owe our students more than a diploma. We owe them a foundation strong enough to carry them through a world that will keep changing long after they leave our classrooms. That is the responsibility we have accepted and the promise we intend to keep.
Dina Anzalone is superintendent of the Hewlett-Woodmere school district.
