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RALEIGH, N.C. – Thousands more North Carolina students will soon be able to show colleges, employers and the military not just what they scored on standardized tests, but the personal and collaborative skills they bring to these settings. The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) has been awarded nearly $4 million from the U.S. Department of Education to expand Skills for the Future, a statewide initiative that helps students demonstrate durable skills like critical thinking, collaboration and communication through real classroom work.
The $3,990,756 Competitive Grants for State Assessments award, one of only four funded nationally in this year's competition, will support Skills for the Future 2.0: Creating Connections over three years, from October 2026 through September 2029. The U.S. Department of Education notified NCDPI of its selection in September, citing the department's "thoughtful approach," while federal peer-reviewers praised the project's design, professional learning strategy and sustainability plan. It is North Carolina's fourth award under this program since 2013, with the two most recent awards supporting Skills for the Future and bringing the state’s combined federal investment in the initiative to nearly $8 million.
"The award advances Pillar 1 of Achieving Educational Excellence, the State Board of Education and North Carolina Department of Public Instruction's strategic plan: preparing each student for their next phase in life," said North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction Maurice "Mo" Green. "North Carolina's Portrait of a Graduate names the skills that phase requires. Skills for the Future is a way we help students build those skills, prove they have them and carry that proof with them when they leave us. This award means we can bring that work to more classrooms, more teachers and more students across the state."
Expanding Student Opportunities
Skills for the Future is built around North Carolina's Portrait of a Graduate, which identifies seven durable skills every graduate should have: critical thinking, collaboration, communication, adaptability, empathy, a learner's mindset and personal responsibility. Rather than measuring those skills with a single test, students demonstrate them over time through projects, performance tasks, career-connected experiences and written reflections on their own work.
The new grant will directly serve 6,000 students in two new cohorts of participating schools. Four thousand of those students will earn a Future-Ready Transcript, a record of demonstrated skills they can share with colleges, employers and military recruiters alongside their academic transcript. Two thousand more will receive developmental feedback to help them keep building. Through a new network of Portrait of a Graduate leaders in districts across the state, the project will shape learning experiences for an additional 10,000 students, with the infrastructure designed to scale to all 1.5 million of North Carolina's public school students.
The current pilot shows what that looks like in practice. More than 6,000 students in seven districts and four charter schools have submitted more than 14,000 pieces of work for evaluation. In a spring 2026 survey, 95% of participating students in the pilot indicated they grew in confidence as a result of their participation, 68% indicated they very or extremely confident in their ability to collaborate, and the more work a student submitted, the higher that confidence climbed. One student said the reflection process helped them "find my own weaknesses" and "made me want to increase my education."
"North Carolina’s Portrait of a Graduate has given us a strong foundation by clearly defining the durable skills students need for their next phase of life," said Dr. Shaun Kellogg, senior director of NCDPI's Office of Research and Promising Practices. "This award gives us the opportunity to build on that foundation, support more students, and continue developing the tools and approaches needed to assess, document and recognize those skills at scale."
Strengthening Teacher Practice
Assessing durable skills well requires teachers to design authentic tasks, use shared rubrics and give feedback that helps students grow. The grant will train 250 educators through implementation cohorts, statewide professional learning communities, summer institutes and coaching, led by NCDPI in partnership with The School Superintendents Association (AASA). Educators will receive training in assessment design, evidence collection, rubric calibration and how to use results in instruction. A new open-access Portrait of a Graduate Resource Hub will put standards-aligned materials, exemplar student work and implementation guides in every teacher's hands, whether or not their school is in a cohort.
"Teachers have always known that a student who can solve an unfamiliar problem or lead a team is showing something important. What they haven't had is a shared way to recognize it, coach it and document it," said Kristine Barberio, Skills for the Future project director. "This next phase puts the training, the rubrics and the feedback tools alongside the people who will use them every day. We're building this with teachers, not for them, and the resource hub means a teacher in any district can start tomorrow."
Connecting Families to Student Learning
For parents, the project will make a student's growth in these skills visible for the first time. Families will have access to user-friendly reporting on their child's progress, a Future-Ready Transcript they can understand and share, and career-planning supports connected to NCcareers.org. Parent and caregiver resources will be available in multiple languages so every family can follow and support their child's development.
Partners
Educational Testing Service (ETS) will provide assessment design, research and validation, and will expand the technology platform, including connections with North Carolina's student information system, learning management system and NCcareers.org. AI-assisted scoring, with human review, will be used to give students faster feedback, calibration studies and bias monitoring throughout.
AASA will lead professional learning and leadership development. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will serve as the independent evaluation partner, studying implementation and educator uptake to guide continuous improvement and statewide scaling.
More than 20 states have adopted Portrait of a Graduate frameworks, but few have built the assessment infrastructure to measure those skills at scale. Through a multi-state network that includes Indiana, Missouri, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and Nevada, North Carolina's model will be shared as a replicable approach for other states.
About Skills for the Future
Skills for the Future is an NCDPI initiative that connects North Carolina's Portrait of a Graduate to classroom practice, assessment and evidence of student learning. The initiative gives students authentic ways to demonstrate durable skills, gives educators tools to teach and assess them, and gives families information that complements traditional measures of academic achievement. Learn more at the Portrait of a Graduate website.
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