This article appeared as "The After Effect" in the Summer 2024 issue of Independent School.
Faculty meetings in August have always been a moment to set goals and intentions for the academic year ahead. At the start of the school year in 2017, faculty and staff at Miss Porter’s School (CT) came together with a much broader agenda and directive: to design a mission-aligned education that truly prepares students for the changing world—with an eye toward the future sustainability of the independent school model and Porter’s long-term viability.
At our opening meeting, author and school change advocate Grant Lichtman led a full-day workshop that included more than the faculty and staff—trustees, current parents, and students were all invited to the workshop, titled “Pushing Our Horizons,” which would reenvision how Miss Porter’s “does school.”
One of the first slides of the day read “Boundary Conditions” in bold letters across the top. “No. 1: The core of our mission is student learning ... as opposed to the college process, test scores, etc.”
It was a powerful statement. Right or wrong, independent schools have long been judged by the perceived prestige of their college acceptance list. With ever-increasing competition from low- to no-cost educational options available to our prospective families, independent schools have differentiated themselves as exceptional college preparatory institutions. Our students, parents, and market look at the college list as the fulfillment of our promise. So when those words appeared on the screen, there were rumbles in the room, particularly from current students. Even the college counseling team did a double-take. With the ever-increasing pressure on students to cultivate a high school record that caters to “what colleges want,” challenging the primacy of the college process in designing a college preparatory education felt like an extremely bold statement.
Yet in that one slide, it was immediately clear that this mandate would give both the academic and college offices the opportunity and the permission to talk about what really matters—how we prepare graduates for success—and to break traditional models of measurement. At that moment, it became clear that we were going to change the narrative about the value of a Porter’s education, and that was both daunting and exciting. After Lichtman’s visit, we started the work of changing not just “the software,” in Lichtman’s words, “but the very operating system on which schools run.”
A New Change
We talk about change a lot in schools, but few have the fortitude to make deep and transformative change happen. Setting out on a journey to redesign secondary education, and in the process redefine the value proposition of independent schools, is no small feat. We knew we needed vision, leadership, and partnership to make it happen.
We knew that the change would lead to a more student-centered, interdisciplinary education that would tap into intrinsic motivation by focusing on issues that are relevant to the students while also helping them build the skills they will need for future success. We also felt strongly that independent schools would need to differentiate themselves in order to survive given their high price point in a competitive market. And due to our privileged position and mission, we felt a moral obligation to prepare students to effectively contribute to a changing world. This was not something we could simply talk about at the opening of school and at graduation while teaching all the same classes in between; we had to intentionally build a curriculum that aligned with our mission and required students to develop the traits stated in our mission.
Prior to 2017, the school had already established a strong three-week InterMission program that provided interdisciplinary, experiential, project-based learning to help students develop skills in essential competency areas. Taking three weeks out of the standard curriculum sent the message that there were more important things than covering all of the content of an Advanced Placement (AP) curriculum, and the program came to be cherished by students and faculty alike. Most important, ninth grade students stretched themselves to complete projects in the community, 10th graders built resilience through exposure to nature, and 11th and 12th grade students had life-changing experiences traveling abroad and completing internships. By 2017, we started to think, “Why not try to make school that way all year long?” In order to do this, we had to change everything all at once—the curriculum, the schedule, and the method of feedback and assessment. They are all interconnected, and we’ve seen this approach fail many times before because of how one area impacts another.
Making Moves
Over the next few years, we changed our schedule to provide long blocks for deep, intensive learning. To ensure that students and teachers could focus on fewer things at one time, we began phasing out AP courses and launched our own set of Advanced Interdisciplinary Seminar (AIS) courses. Some students and families were nervous about this change because they believed AP scores were essential to college admission. The fact is that AP scores are considered as part of a college application, but they are not typically a major factor compared with other parts, including performance in compelling courses. We were able to assure families of this, and they started to see that before our students even get to college, they’ve traveled abroad and have experienced something akin to an internship. Not many would choose traditional AP courses over experiences like those.
In another positive change, we made our grading practices more transparent, growth-oriented, and equitable. In 2017, Porter’s became a member of the Mastery Transcript Consortium, which emphasizes mastery learning, or competency-based education. While we have not yet adopted the Mastery Transcript, we have developed a competency-based framework that is used in every class schoolwide in which students earn ratings on learning objectives, giving them a clear sense of what they are doing well and where they need to focus their efforts. Our ninth graders don’t receive grades, and the ratings for 10th through 12th graders are only translated into grades at the end of the course. And rather than sitting for exams, at the end of each term, our students demonstrate and share their learning with the community in authentic and engaging ways. The goal is to create flexible and scalable learning records that allow students to showcase their strengths and share evidence of their learning to colleges in a way that is more telling than a simple list of courses and grades on a traditional transcript.
With all of these changes, we found ourselves coming together more and more as thought partners. Tim hosted a parent meeting in February 2018 to continue to articulate the long-term vision for innovation and the most immediate changes on the horizon. Amy’s participation on the faculty panel sent a vital message to the community: The two offices are working side by side to make sure every change is in the best interest of students, now and in the future. The college process is not going to be a reason not to innovate; college success is at the center of the why we innovate.
Early on, we shifted the school’s org chart: The college office moved from being a part of the office of student affairs to the academic office. Our partnership became a fundamental principle and selling point for us: Everything we were doing was not only enhancing learning but also helping our students distinguish themselves in the college process. Rather than taking the same classes and earning the same grades reported on the same transcript as most other top students in the country, our students would have unique experiences and stories to tell along with the academic prep they would need for college success.
Sharing the Stories
Porter’s had long centered its mission on preparing students for success in college, leadership, and life; however, we had not yet found a way to demonstrate those outcomes without talking about the college matriculation list. But the changes to our program would demand a new way of articulating the value proposition of our school—the unique benefits Porter’s education provides to students.
One of the things that Lichtman told us that really stayed with us was that most change initiatives don’t fail due to poor ideas or execution; they fail because of poor communication. Tim asked Amy to chair our communications design team to look at how we were broadly communicating our plans with both internal and external constituencies. If this change was going to be successful, we needed to get closer to our college students and early career alumnae; we needed their stories.
In early January 2018, the college office hosted its inaugural Welcome Home Dinner for the most recent four years of graduates—which we now refer to as our College Cohort—bringing dozens of graduates to campus. At registration, we preloaded iPads with a survey about their college experience, including majors and minors; study abroad plans; and clubs, sports, and activities.
That afternoon, faculty members led small focus groups to solicit additional information on recent graduates’ experiences, their transition to college, and their successes and challenges in the classroom. At dinner with our senior class, Amy moderated a discussion based on the Gallup Six, the six shared experiences that successful adults reported experiencing in college. Our graduates shared insights and guidance with our seniors about how to make the most of their college education.
By the end of the program, we had a treasure trove of data. Our graduates’ shared stories demonstrated the value of a Porter’s education in tangible, relatable, authentic ways. We knew there was more to be mined, and we sent a follow-up survey, asking them to share their college leadership positions, where they studied abroad, research they had completed and internships they had held, their graduate school enrollments, and early-career engagement. As we sifted through the replies, we found ourselves with an entirely new set of lists. Even more compelling than our strong college matriculation list, these accomplishments of our students while they were in college and after graduation were a tremendous testament to the value of a Porter’s education (see “A Snapshot of Success” at right). Porter’s prepares students not only for the college admission process, but much more significantly to explore, contribute, and flourish in college, in graduate school, in careers, and in life.
Difficult Conversations
As plans for the changes developed, so too did the questions from our prospective and current families about how these changes were going to impact their daughters’ college searches. Amy became a standing member of admission panels at open houses and visit days. She intentionally sought opportunities to be provocative and elevate the college question as we innovated. The changes we were implementing made our students’ educational experience better, it gave them agency to chart their unique path toward their college years, and it armed them with powerful narratives about who they were becoming and their plans for their future as they approached their college applications.
To underscore our work to our current families, we invited Frank Bruni, author of Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania, to speak as a keynote at our fall family weekend in 2019. Bruni’s message challenged our community to think differently about what we mean when we promise that Porter’s provides exceptional preparation for college. What our graduates do in college is the most influential indicator of who they will become in their professional and personal lives. And we had the data to prove it. When prospective and current families asked to see our college list, they received “Success Beyond Farmington,” which included degrees earned, internships held, and early-career engagement.
Collaborating through change hasn’t always been easy. We are innovating in a space that intersects with a college admission system that at best is running on the status quo; it is a tricky balance. The cornerstone of our relationship has been our ability to wrestle with disagreement when our priorities and perspectives conflict. While Amy embraces the primacy of student learning in our curriculum redesign, Tim acknowledges that we cannot put barriers between our students and their college dreams. Some of our most lively conversations have been over course titling and departmental credit—not a small subject when you are moving toward a fully interdisciplinary curriculum but essential for a college applicant in an admission landscape in which transcripts may be evaluated by artificial intelligence.
The key to our success is in our shared values and mutual respect for each other’s domain knowledge. We end most conversations with an acknowledgment that we both want what is best for our students, and sometimes that means slowing down. We phased out our AP program over a period of years, and we still offer AP exams to students who may be seeking admission to international universities that require them. We have implemented a competency-based feedback and assessment system, and we still provide students with a traditional transcript.
Different by Design
Now almost seven years into our project to redesign high school, we are proud of what we have accomplished and what we are providing students. Our students continue to be well prepared for college, and now they are even better prepared for the world. They have stories to tell about their academic journeys and agency over their hopes and dreams; they are increasingly compelling college applicants. Those who seek to measure a Porter’s education based on our college matriculation list find that it is stronger than ever.
We still have a long way to go as we work toward completing the transition to competency-based mastery learning and a new transcript that allows students to more authentically show their unique strengths to colleges in ways that give colleges better and more reliable information. We hope that Miss Porter’s will be part of the movement to fully align what is best for learning with the needs of college admission offices. Not only will we be changing the way school is done and the way college admission happens, we will be helping society think differently about success.