Grok: Portrait of a Graduate Framework = Danger Level High

January 22, 2026

Portrait of a Graduate (PoG) is the newest education rage coming to a classroom near you. It is being widely implemented across Minnesota and the nation.

But if AI itself flags this new social-emotional learning (SEL) assessment tool as dangerous, it’s worth taking a closer look.

A Utah school board member, Christina Boggess, recently described PoG in detail in an interview with Marsha Metzger from Protect Ohio Children The 1 hour and 16 minute interview is called “The Soul Scanner” - How AI-Powered “Soft-Skills” Assessment Is Becoming the Most Intimate Surveillance Tool Ever Deployed in American Classrooms. You will want to view that interview for yourself, but we’ll summarize some key observations below.

PoG is a description, a portrait, that school districts construct of what they want their graduates to look like. Once created, the entire school experience is focused around creating that outcome for every student. While individual districts are instructed to create their own portrait, all of them strangely end up reflecting the same outcomes, always aligned with the social-emotional outcomes of social-emotional-learning (SEL). In addition, the “Portrait” is almost exclusively non-academic.

PoG is an AI SEL assessment tool which privately interacts with children through their personal screens. This interaction may take place at school but could also be utilized at home, bringing a government established AI evaluation and observation tool into your home, a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment of the constitution. PoG promotes “deep learning.” This means PoG mines your child for deeply personal, private and often invasive information. Responses are immediately sent and processed through a giant AI server farm for interpretation, comparison and assessment in real time. PoG comes back with a “score” and continues asking more questions and probing the child until they respond with the correct answers, values, attitudes or beliefs. It’s like a personal SEL coach.

Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) has taken public schools by storm. Sailing under the guise of benign language like fostering “Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills and Responsible Decision Making”, parents and administrators are fooled into thinking it is personalized and tailored learning for each child. We have written extensively about SEL. Our website is filled with analysis and tools to help parents and the public understand that SEL does not mean what they think it means. CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning) is the command center for SEL. This is from their website:

SEL is a process which has been fully embedded into curriculum and assessments. It has replaced academic instruction with psycho-social feelings-based instruction designed to achieve desired outcomes and attitudes for all children and adults. It is well established that SEL is the process through which ALL children’s values, attitudes and beliefs are to be changed to achieve EQUITY. Equity demands equal outcomes which are very different from equal opportunities, and equity is necessary to create their definition of JUST communities and classrooms. Globalism, climate change, collectivism, radical gender ideology, classism and racism are equity doctrines baked into SEL “competencies.”

Under misnomers like “data-driven”, “student-centered learning”, “inquiry-based learning” and “whole-child education”, schools are implementing these AI powered SEL assessment programs. And they don’t involve human intervention anymore!

Rewards
Students are “rewarded” for “correct” responses. “Correct” meaning the responses match the values, attitudes and beliefs that the program wants the child to internalize. Is it appropriate for our government run institutions to determine the values, attitudes and beliefs of our children? In fact, students must change their mindsets to successfully pass the PoG tests. Their “progress” toward PoG’s goals is continually measured and plotted.

Think about what that means. If children can be rewarded with incentives such as scholarships or acceptance into colleges for demonstrating the correct mindset, is PoG a social credit system? The student’s digital ID is permanent, accessible and quite valuable. Will it be for sale? Is it already for sale? Who will be able to buy or view it? Schools, employers, the military? Will students who ‘fail’ PoG be denied opportunities because they don’t demonstrate the proper “mindset”? Do parents have any input into defining this “proper mindset”?

Another key observation of the PoG instructional method is that no “learning” occurs through direct instruction, observation or grading by a teacher – which would include actual and demonstrable measurements of content mastery. It is all self disclosure from the child.

SEL and PoG measure subjective attitudes, values and beliefs. The obvious danger is that it is a powerful surveillance system which is simultaneously coaching, steering and grading children toward what SEL and PoG have determined are desirable attributes and attitudes.

Additionally, we know the SEL process creates “cognitive dissonance” in children when SEL outcomes conflict with their personal spiritual and family values. That’s why SEL behavior intervention strategies target this dissonance to ensure the desired outcomes are achieved. CPL wrote about this here.

And we also know that SEL is designed to create predictable, controllable, activist students to champion all the Marxist dogmas. Now, through PoG, this process of “dissonance management” to achieve all SEL outcomes is accelerated through the power of AI.

What could go wrong?

A lot. Marsha Metzger of Parents On The Level did all of us a great service by feeding the entire transcript from the following PoG conference into Grok:

“Al Meets Portrait of a Graduate: Measuring Future-Ready Skills: As more states and districts capture their vision for student learning in a Portrait of a Graduate, they increasingly ask how student attainment of such competencies as curiosity and growth mindsets can be meaningfully measured. New visions require new tools, including machine learning and natural language processing. Learn how state boards can harness these technologies to produce actionable data on how students are mastering the competencies laid out in the portraits. Participants will see concrete examples, interact with live tools, and leave with a policy-ready measurement playbook.”

She asked Grok to “provide an assessment of the conference transcript of the session… instructed [Grok] to use strict logic, mathematical probability and observational science from educational research, policy analysis and recent studies...”

The result was deeply troubling. Grok titled its analysis The Soul Scanner - An AI-powered surveillance tool in American classrooms. Then Grok identified 8 areas of concern:

1. Privacy and Data Security Risks

2. Algorithmic Bias and inaccuracy Leading to Unfair Labeling

3. Erosion of Human Judgment and Teacher Autonomy

4. Psychological Harm and Surveillance Effects

5. Exacerbation of Inequities and Digital Divide

6. Over-Reliance and Diminished Critical Thinking/Creativity

7. Unintended Societal Control and Indoctrination Risks – (precedents like social credit system)

8. Implementation and Cost Burdens

Grok rated PoG’s overall danger/risk level as High. Grok said the “harms are systemic, long-term and difficult to reverse, especially in politicized or resource-constrained settings. Mitigation requires rigorous independent audits, optouts, transparency, and human oversight.”

SO. One of the world’s most powerful AI engines is warning parents that one of the world’s most powerful school AI SEL assessment tools is extremely dangerous for children.

What can you do?

· Become as informed as possible.

· Share this substack widely.

· Share Soul Searcher Webinar widely.

· Take this information to parents in your community and to your school board. Many schools have implemented PoG already or are discussing ‘frameworks’ for implementation. It might not be called Portrait of a Graduate. You may need to ask probing questions to determine if the concept is present in your school.

· Review this list of Minnesota schools with PoG in place or under consideration. It is not comprehensive, so please email us if your school has implemented PoG.

· Find out if your superintendent is attending the February AASA (American Association of School Administrators) National Conference on Education. ASSA acquired the organization that created PoG, Battelle for Kids, last summer. This means that the PoG implementation strategy will now be driven from the top down. Be sure you speak to your administrator in advance about your concerns with PoG. And here is an interesting observation: the latest AASA issue features the Marxist fist on its cover. The Marxist raised fist (often just called the raised fist salute) has appeared at many points in modern history as a symbol of class struggle, worker solidarity, resistance, and revolutionary politics.

Coincidence? Accident? Telegraphing? You be the judge.

Public education in America has become an extremely unsafe place for our children on so many levels. Spiritually, emotionally, physically, cognitively and now deeply personally. Seriously consider joining the millions of families who have exited the system to ensure their children are receiving an education…not indoctrination.

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Please visit our website for more information. CPLEducation.org

Registration will open in January. Stay tuned!

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