When families describe their child at their best, they describe the State Board's Portrait of a Learner. Most of it happens where no transcript can see it.
Families and students in PTA chapters across California answered five questions in their own voices. Every chapter got its results back in time to bring them to the one place every district already has to listen: the LCAP.
The State Board of Education's Portrait of a Learner, adopted May 2026. Press play and watch a family's words light it up.
The state has a portrait, billions in investment, and a law that requires every district to listen to families. What's been missing is the families' own evidence. Click through what California has already put in place.
Its community survey drew 2,094 responses from 54 counties, plus nine listening sessions2. It found “overwhelming consensus that multilingualism should be a core competency”1. This campaign picks up where it left off, at the scale of family life.
Each square is 250 voices. State Board survey This campaign
Every year, every California district writes a Local Control and Accountability Plan, and every year it has to ask families what matters. Parent advisory committees review the plan. The superintendent answers them in writing. Family engagement is one of the state's eight priorities4.
The door is already open. What families rarely have is their own evidence, in their own words, organized and ready. This campaign gave it to them.
Listen in winter. Bring it to the LCAP in spring.
Voice first. Five questions, three versions: families, students in grades 3–12, and our youngest learners in TK–2 with a grown-up. Every student question mirrors a family question, so a parent and their own child are heard side by side. Pick a version, answer out loud, and watch your words map onto the State Board's portrait.
with California State PTAAnswer a question, or hear an example, to see the mapping happen.
This demo runs a simplified reader in your browser, and nothing you say leaves this page. The campaign uses trained machine-learning models with human review.
100%
agreed to have their answers combined with others, no name attached.
23%
of parents also chose to share their story publicly, by first name or anonymously.
From Humboldt to Imperial, 52 of 58 counties took part. Shade the map by participation, or by how many residents speak a language other than English at home. Tap a pin to hear a voice.
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We asked families when they've seen their child at their best. Nine in ten described at least one competency in the State Board's Portrait of a Learner. Every one of the seven showed up. Only one in seven mentioned a grade or a test score. Click a cluster to open it.
Each dot is one family's answer to question 1 (a random sample of 6,412), placed by the competency it describes most strongly.
Seven in ten “at their best” moments happened outside the classroom: on a team, at a family business, caring for a younger sibling, translating at the doctor's office. Families aren't saying school doesn't matter. They're saying learning is bigger than school, which is exactly what Community Schools and Golden State Pathways were built to connect.
It's already working: California's community schools cut chronic absence by 30% compared with matched schools9.
Every LCAP must report a set of state metrics. Families described something else entirely. Nearly four in five parents named a strength their child's school doesn't capture. The good news: the LCAP template already has a place for it.
Priority 3, family engagement: districts must show “efforts … to seek parent input in making decisions.” Priority 6, school climate: the state lists “surveys of students, parents, and teachers on the sense of safety and school connectedness” as a local measure11. A family's answer about their child at their best belongs in both.
When we asked who outside of school helped their child grow, families named coaches, grandparents, pastors, employers, librarians and youth programs. That's a Community School's partner list, written by the community.
A mother and her daughter answered separately, in different languages, on different days. Play them both and watch what they agree on. Then add the third view a portrait district can bring: the student's own words in class.
No one sees the whole child alone. That's the step families can ask for in the LCAP: adopt the portrait, then measure it from student voice, so school sees what the family and the student already know.
Asked what their child will need to thrive at 25, 84% of parents named a durable skill: communicating, adapting, solving problems, working with others. 37% named a degree. Families are writing California's portrait themselves.
Every story here was shared with permission, first name only or anonymous, by the family's choice. Answers appear in their original language, with English alongside.
Districts already publish what they heard from families. Most of it looks like the left column. Here's what one PTA chapter's report put in front of its district instead.
225 survey responses. Six themes.
Below is the California Department of Education's adopted LCAP template5, filled in the way the Sierra Mesa report makes possible. Toggle between the blank template and the filled version.
A summary of the process used to engage educational partners in the development of the LCAP.
| Educational Partner(s) | Process for Engagement |
|---|---|
| Parents and families (Sierra Mesa High School PTSA, Canyon View Middle School PTA, Desert Willow Middle School PTSA) | At Their Best listening sessions at February PTA meetings (Feb 3–11, 2027). 212 families answered five questions by voice, video or text in English and Spanish. Results returned to the chapters in a "What We Heard" report and shared with the PAC and ELPAC. |
| Students, TK–12 | 341 students answered mirrored questions through a link from their parent; TK–2 with a grown-up. Students under 13 took part with parent consent. |
A description of how the adopted LCAP was influenced by the feedback provided by educational partners.
| Metric # | Metric | Baseline | Year 1 Outcome | Year 2 Outcome | Target for Year 3 Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3.6 | Percent of families describing their child's strengths in Portrait of a Learner terms (At Their Best, Priorities 3 and 6) | 93% (2026–27) | Pending | Pending | 95%, with every competency named by at least 30% of families |
One chapter's report shapes one district's plan. Hundreds of them, all pointing to the same seven competencies, tell Sacramento something no survey could: California's families already hold the State Board's portrait. It's time to fund it in every district.
| What families said | Where it lands |
|---|---|
| All of it, chapter by chapter | LCAP family engagement and parent advisory review, in 268 districts so far |
| Strengths show up outside the classroom | Community Schools: extended learning time and opportunities · Golden State Pathways work-based learning |
| Coaches, relatives and community leaders help students grow | Community Schools: family and community engagement · community asset mapping |
| Schools miss what families see | State Board Portrait of a Learner · LCAP Priorities 3 and 6 |
| Families describe durable skills for life at 25 | Secondary School Redesign Pilot · LCAP goals |
| A specific teacher or program works | LCAP actions: protect and expand what's working |
Anchor the state's existing investments to a portrait in every district, and fund the one-stop resource that helps districts build one.
Capture. Voice, video or text, in any language, on any device. Each group has its own link.
Understanding. Answers are transcribed and translated, then read by machine-learning models trained to recognize Portrait competencies, settings and the people who help young people grow. Trained readers check a sample of every batch.
Privacy. Analysis is aggregated and de-identified. No school, district or child is named in statewide results. Results are never reported for groups smaller than ten. Public stories appear only with a family's separate, explicit permission. Students under 13 take part only with a parent's consent.
Ownership. Scaling Student Success owns the mission, the questions, consent and the data. Impacter Pathway runs the platform as founding tech partner.
No scores. This is a listening campaign. Families and students are heard, not rated.
| Empowered Learner | Curiosity · Growth Mindset · Grit |
| Person of Character | Gratitude · Self-Control · Compassion |
| Productive Collaborator | Perspective-Taking |
| Effective Communicator | Perspective-Taking |
| Community Contributor | Purpose · Compassion |
| Critical Thinker and Problem Solver | Curiosity · Grit |
| Multilingual, Multicultural Learner | Perspective-Taking |
State Board competencies (left) mapped to the eight competencies Impacter Pathway measures in student voice (right).
