A Shared Definition of Student Readiness
Across Indiana, educators, families, and community leaders rallied around a simple goal: every student should graduate prepared for what comes next. Through the Portrait of a Graduate – a statewide framework for readiness after graduation in college, careers, and life – the state defined the knowledge, skills, and experiences students should develop before leaving high school. These include strong academic foundations, consistent attendance, and meaningful progress toward postsecondary education, careers, or workforce pathways.
But defining readiness was only the beginning. To make that framework meaningful for educators and leaders, the state needed a way to measure it consistently and understand how students were progressing toward those outcomes.
Turning the Portrait Into Measurable Indicators
Indiana translated the Portrait of a Graduate framework into specific indicators of student readiness that reflect the experiences and achievements that signal a student is prepared for life after high school.
To make those indicators usable statewide, the Indiana Department of Education launched Indiana Graduates Prepared to Succeed (Indiana GPS). Indiana GPS is an analytics platform that brings together the data behind those indicators and shows how students are progressing toward readiness goals across schools and districts. With Indiana GPS, educators and leaders can track readiness trends and identify where additional support may be needed.
Connecting the Data Behind the Framework
Indiana already had much of the data needed to measure student readiness, while other indicators were still being developed as the state refined its Portrait of a Graduate framework. However, before Indiana GPS, much of the data behind those indicators lived across different systems and often required manual work to bring together and analyze. Indiana addressed this challenge by implementing the Ed-Fi Data Standard, connecting education data across systems and aligning it with the state’s longitudinal data infrastructure.
With consistent data definitions and automated data flows, the state can now calculate readiness indicators reliably across districts. Information that once required manual piecing together from multiple systems can be generated quickly and consistently, giving educators and leaders timely insight into student progress.
From Framework to Action
With Indiana GPS in place, Indiana’s Portrait of a Graduate became more than a framework. It became a working system educators can use to guide decisions.
Teachers, counselors, and school leaders can see how students are progressing on key readiness indicators and identify where support is needed. District leaders can track trends across schools and student populations, helping guide resource allocation and program design. Because the indicators are measured consistently statewide, educators and policymakers share a common understanding of what student readiness means and how it is progressing across communities.
A Foundation for Continuous Improvement
Indiana’s approach demonstrates how a Portrait of a Graduate can move beyond a framework and become part of a functioning education data system, as well as the basis for high school redesign efforts and new accountability model. By connecting specific indicators of the Portrait of a Graduate to reliable data through Indiana GPS and the Ed-Fi Data Standard, the state created a consistent way to measure readiness and track progress over time.
That foundation not only helps educators support students today – it also positions Indiana to continue strengthening connections between education, workforce pathways, and long-term outcomes. Indiana’s Portrait of a Graduate is a system educators can use to help students reach it.
