Edgar Rodriguez says New Visions curriculum and affinity partners are ready to support Portrait
Edgar Rodriguez, VP at New Visions for Public Schools, says schools must reorganize teaching and assessment but teachers lack training. He says affinity organizations serve a third of high schools and have field-tested project-based curriculum ready to support the transition.
Thank you, Chair, the Novets and panel.
My name is Edgar Rodriguez, and before this role, I served for over 20 years as a teacher, assistant principal, and principal of our schools in New York City.
I come here today as vice president of school support and innovations for public schools.
Which has partnered with the city for over 37 years to drive system-level change.
As an affinity partner, we're the lead partner for 71 public high schools and provide services for schools across the city.
The shift associated with Portrait of a Graduate asks schools to reorganize and educators to teach and assess students.
In ways that they've never been trained to do so.
As educators who are concerned that so many questions remain unanswered, even as these changes are being implemented as we speak.
Students whose diplomas will be granted under the new requirements are already in our buildings, taught by teachers who have received
little relevant professional learning in this matter.
Generative AI brings opportunities and at the same time lots of challenges and questions about the validity of any assessment.
This work has to move quickly and it has to draw on the capacity that already exists in the city.
Affinity organizations represented in this panel
collectively serve a third of the high schools in the city and represent a significant piece of that capacity.
We have spent decades doing this work with our schools, and the system should treat us as critical resource in this transition.
New Visions Affinity Network and our work with schools
has derived three key things that we believe are of value to this transition.
Curriculum, we have produced curriculum in science and social studies that is used by the majority of high schools across the city, and it's based on real-world investigations and phenomena,
and it's a type of project-based learning that the Portuguese graduate calls for.
It's already written, goes through continuous revisions, and it's already field tested.
The rest is in my...
Didn't make the two minutes, but I'll do better next time.
I appreciate it.
I also want to appreciate New Visions.
I taught at a New Vision school, so double thank you.