Projects vs. Programs: Why a Course-Embedded Capstone Experience Helps More Students

Facing a New Day in Secondary Education

Many schools are on the precipice of adapting their longstanding exit exams to new, more authentic graduation measures. If this reflects what’s happening in your community,  you’ve come to the right place. While compulsory standardized tests (Regents exams et al.) served a purpose for a time, educators and administrators attest that offering a choice of assessment types instead results in better learning outcomes for far more of their student populations. While integrating new graduation requirement options, such as internships, portfolios, or capstone projects, comes with a new set of challenges, logistical and financial, there is wisdom to be gained from comparing the effectiveness of independent capstone projects with capstone programs.

What's Happening in Some States

In recent years, several states have grappled with the use of capstone-type assessments as an option in addition to traditional graduation assessments. While Colorado, Connecticut, Kentucky, Rhode Island, and Tennessee recommend capstone projects over traditional comprehensive tests, their implementation of capstone projects has left districts to develop and implement these assessments as stand-alone projects for students to complete relatively independently. 

The Issue

Most criticism of or debate about capstone projects is not focused on the strategy itself or its intrinsic or potential educational value but rather on the quality of its execution—i.e., capstone projects tend to be criticized when they are poorly designed or reflect low academic standards, or when students are allowed to complete relatively superficial projects of low educational value. In addition, if teachers and students consider capstone projects to be a formality, lower-quality products typically result. Then, when the projects reflect consistently low standards, quality, and educational value year after year, educators, students, parents, and community members may come to view capstone projects as a waste of time or resources.

A Solution

By embedding capstone projects within a comprehensive capstone course with trained and dedicated instructors, not only are the project-based learning benefits more reliably attainable, but the dimensions of new, robust graduation measures like those in the Portrait of a New York State Graduate become the learning objective as well.