Six attributes, no rubric yet, and a capstone that happens in May. Here is how to record the evidence now.

What the record holds today, in plain terms

A student’s record is kept by the family on the student’s own device, and a school that issues on it adds rows the family folds in. Two kinds of thing carry evidence.

An entry, sealed into a work sample. The family captures a moment as one of nine kinds: a book, a project, a course or unit, volunteer work, a mentor session, a competition, a job, an attempt that did not work out, or a purchase for a scholarship-funded family. Each entry has a title, a date, an optional note, and an optional link to the evidence. Nothing about an entry is public until the family seals it, and sealing makes it a work sample with a public link. What goes public is the title, the kind, the date, the name of the issuing records office, and whether evidence is on file. The evidence itself stays with the family, who can share it with a reader who asks.

A course row on the transcript. Each row has a year, a subject, a title, a credit, a grade, an “Evidence of mastery” column the family fills in words (a portfolio, an exam, a project), and one of four signer kinds. The transcript also carries a program name and a one-paragraph philosophy that tells a reader what kind of program they are looking at. A school that issues on the record declares course rows itself, with the title, the term, the grade, and the credit, and each row reads “Declared by” followed by the school’s name on the public page. The school asks the teacher who taught it to co-sign from an emailed link.

The Portrait attribute is not a field on either of these today. Write it in the title or the note, so it is sealed with the rest. A Portrait plugin that carries the six attributes as their own attestation types is being built (see the Portrait page), and nothing on this page depends on it.

The six attributes, and the evidence each one takes

The attribute names and the phrases in quotation marks are the Department’s own (its page on the attributes). The evidence forms are the ones the Department’s September 14, 2026 release lists for local assessment: classroom assessments, student work, performance-based learning experiences, and educator observations (the release). What follows is how each one is recorded today.

Academically Prepared

“A strong foundation in the New York State learning standards.” This is the course row. The school declares it, the teacher co-signs it, and the evidence column names the exam, the performance task, or the portfolio the grade rests on. A performance task itself can also be sealed as a work sample, dated the day it happened, with the teacher as its witness.

A Creative Innovator

“Imagination, curiosity, and flexible thinking to solve problems creatively, and develop new ideas and products.” This is a project entry: what the student made, when, and a note on the tools and the collaborators. The adult who supervised it signs. The artifact, a film, an app, a design, stays with the student; the sealed sample says it exists, when it was made, and who saw it. An attempt entry records the version that failed, and in this record a failed attempt never subtracts from anything.

A Critical Thinker

“Analyzing information thoughtfully, evaluating evidence critically, and identifying patterns and connections.” This is the capstone or the research paper. The school declares the capstone as a row, with its title, term, grade, and credit, and the advisor co-signs with a sentence about the work. The paper is sealed as a work sample by the family, so a reader can see that the document existed on that date and has not changed since.

An Effective Communicator

“Articulating ideas clearly and confidently through speaking, writing, and the use of different types of media.” This is the oral defense. The family seals a project entry dated the day of the defense and sends each panel member a witness link; each signs with their name, their role, and a sentence about what they heard. A panel of three is three signatures on one sample, and the page shows the count as a sum, never as a score.

A Global Citizen

“Acting responsibly and ethically within local, global, and digital communities.” This is service and civic work: a volunteer entry with the hours in the note, signed by the site supervisor, or a job entry signed by the employer. A signature from a school or organization address carries a plain fact about that, described below.

Reflective and Future Focused

“Engaging in self-reflection to identify strengths and areas for growth, setting meaningful goals.” This is the student’s own writing. A weekly note is written by the student, never witnessed, and only an excerpt of at most 140 characters is ever public; the body stays on the device. A mentor session entry, signed by the counselor or advisor who met with the student, records that the conversation happened and what it was about, in the adult’s words.

What a witness signs

A witness is the adult who was there: the teacher, the advisor, the panel member, the site supervisor, the employer. They get one link, on the page they are asked to sign, and they read exactly what they are being asked to confirm. They type their name, their role, an organization if they want one, and a sentence in their own words about what they saw. For a course row they also say how they know the student and which grade they are attesting to, and the grade may differ from the one the school declared; where it does, both grades are shown side by side and neither is hidden. There is no account, no password, and nothing to upload. The address a signer types at signing is kept on the public signature only as a one-way hash, so a later signature from the same address matches this one; the invited address stays on the request so the link can be sent, and is never copied to the public record.

A witness does not grade the student, compare them with anyone, or vouch for a program. If they would rather not sign, they close the tab; nothing happens, nobody is told, and there are no reminders. Every signature, on a work sample or a course row, comes through a witness link the family or the school sends to the specific person who was there; the public page offers no walk-up form, and a parent signing their own child’s work sample is labeled as exactly that. The longer version is on the witness page.

Next to each signature the record states, as a fact, how far the signer’s identity was checked: an email address only; a school or organization address the invitation was sent to (automatic only when the invited address ends in .edu, .gov, .mil, a k12.<state>.us district domain, schools.nyc.gov, or boces.org) or a professional license staff looked up; an identity document checked by staff, with only the record of the check kept; or a history of earlier signatures on file. A teacher invited at a district’s .org address reads as an email address only. The fact describes the check, not the person, and it never ranks one signer against another.

What a college or employer sees at one link

A reader opens the link with no account. For a work sample the page shows the verdict, the receipt id, the kind of entry, the title, the issuing records office, the date it occurred and the date it was sealed, the hash of its contents, and each co-signer’s name, role, organization, sentence, date, and identity mark. For a course row it shows the title, term, credit, and the grade as declared, with “Declared by” and the school’s name where the school declared it, and the same signature detail. For the whole transcript it shows the program, every row, and the tallies; the philosophy paragraph is on the printed transcript, not on the public page.

Below the detail sit two paragraphs the page always carries: what this verification means (the record was sealed by its issuer at the stated time and the bytes have not changed since) and what it does not mean (the hash proves integrity, not that a third party evaluated the work; the signatures say who put their name on it). A reader who would rather not trust our page downloads the proof file and runs the published verifier with no server in the loop. We wrote the reader’s page for exactly this: reading a Witness Transcript™. Both samples below are fictional: open the sample transcript to see the whole record as a receiver does, and one declared course to see the school’s label on a row.

Why the student must hold the copy

The transcript described at the June 2026 Regents meeting does not yet exist in any published form. A district’s student information system will be replaced at least once before the Class of 2033 graduates. A student moves, changes schools, applies to an employer in another state, or comes back for a record ten years later. A copy that lives only in the district’s system, or only in the state’s, is a record of that system, and it goes when the system goes.

So the family holds the record on the student’s own device and in an encrypted cloud copy, can export it in open formats at any time, can share a link and take it back, and keeps it when the school stops issuing. The school keeps its own working copy of what it declared. Once a family has claimed a learner, the school can archive that learner on its side but cannot delete the record, and if a school stops paying, its learners keep the record and its export. One honest limit, stated where the standard states it: the family’s signing key is held in escrow by Eformogi today, and the custody chapter of the specification says so in those words.

A public school district, a charter school, or a BOCES does not enroll through the self-serve terms a microschool uses; a public agency’s agreement is drafted with counsel, and the place to start is hello@eformogi.com. The price list is on the pricing page.

Open the sample record

Frequently asked questions

The school is the witness, and the learner holds the record

A school sees the work. That is its standing in the record: the adults who were there put their names on what they saw, and the school that declared a row is named on it. What the school does not do is own the result. The learner holds the record and takes it with them, through every rubric draft, every system migration, and every move, and a reader anywhere checks it at one link without asking the school or us. The format is published at eformogi.com/spec so that this stays true whether or not we are in the room, and the promises behind it are written down in the sovereignty contract.

See also: what the Regents change requires · what a universal transcript must hold · what a witness is asked to sign · the Portrait page