How High School Should Really End
It’s spring, and time for the Triple Crown. But I do not mean in horse racing.
Rather, at Federal Hocking Secondary School it is time for the academic Triple Crown for our seniors.
The first of the three, our Graduation Portfolio presentation, took place last Friday, the day before the Kentucky Derby. Each senior stood before a panel of faculty and defended the portfolio that they had assembled demonstrating their readiness to graduate.
The first section of the portfolio was their plan for after high school, complete with college or job acceptance letters, resumes, letters of reference and their own agenda for life after high school.
Support Sanders' Secondary School Re-entry Act
Those of you in and around schools have noticed that it’s been increasingly challenging to try to keep students until graduation over the last few years.
Drop-out rates in many states have soared to their highest levels since the mid-1990’s.
The continuing increase in families living in or near the poverty level has been a major factor, exacerbated by almost a decade of on-going budget cuts at the school and district levels and the migration of services away from much-needed social/emotional supports to more purely “academic” programming, i.e., core subjects that will be tested. Enforcement of "zero-tolerance" policies has prematurely pushed struggling students out of schools and into the juvenile justice system.