Our current traditional one-size-fits-all educational model that was born during the industrial age is not meeting the needs of our new, rapidly evolving knowledge-based economy. The next generation deserves a personalized educational experience that better equips them with the skills, values, and knowledge they need to thrive in a new modern world.
The industrial age employee of yesterday was prepared for a lifelong career by an education system that still emphasizes memorization and judges students by their ability to recall facts. This has led to an over-reliance on standardized tests, but they give little insight into a student's ability to think critically and function within a new modern workforce.
In the absence of necessary education reform at the federal or state levels, new private schools are emerging while others are slowly evolving to help combat dated tactics. The Portfolio School stands out from this growing crowd of innovators and is working tirelessly to scale its cutting-edge curriculum for more students to flourish.
The Portfolio School is creating transformative learning experiences for their students. Following the belief that 65% of the jobs current students will hold have yet to be invented, their staff has a creative mindset that is helping them reinvent education based on research from leading experts.
For example, at the Portfolio School, birth dates don't define the learner's journey. Students are grouped based on their level of independence and academic ability. Subjects are also incorporated and contextualized into projects. The school day is divided into deep learning time for long-range projects, as well as time for self-paced mastering of core skills such as literacy or math. All of which leads to a curated portfolio and a mastery transcript as evidence of learning. No GPA or transcripts of letter grades.
Babur Habib, Co-founder of Portfolio School, explains their team philosophy well. "We all learn best when we apply our knowledge to more real-world scenarios," explains Habib, "As the famous Chinese philosopher Confucius said, "I hear, and I forget. I see and remember. I do, and I understand."
With a project-based learning approach, Portfolio School students are learning academic skills in a much deeper way and acquiring soft skills such as perseverance, empathy, creativity, and social-emotional skills. This wouldn't be possible without the remarkable projects that have been crafted by teachers and guided by student interest. It's this winning formula that is going to help the Portfolio School launch a new online platform that will extend their reach beyond their classrooms.
The Portfolio School's team vision is to make their curriculum available for a much wider audience, which includes other independent and public schools along with various global partners. To do this, they are aiming to create a new digital platform that will make their curriculum available online for other educators to utilize. They are calling this project 'ScaleUp.'
The goal of the ScaleUp platform will be to demonstrate successfully utilized project frameworks that other educators can use and even modify for their classrooms or students. Educators will be able to search and find projects related to different topics and grade levels. Each education project that has been customized and successfully implemented can be submitted back to the platform, creating a curated and interactive repository of quality projects for others to utilize.
We are proud to support the Portfolio School and help kickstart the ScaleUp project so that more educators and students can reap the benefits. Millions could potentially get access to the ScaleUp platform, and communities will better understand how this is the future of education.
