How states are reinventing what it takes to get a high school diploma
The coronavirus crisis is prompting difficult conversations about what it means to graduate.
Governors and superintendents are scrapping requirements, undoing testing mandates and adopting emergency rules so that high school seniors can graduate this year.
The coronavirus crisis cut short the school year for K-12 schools in more than a dozen states, and others are in the middle of a shutdown they hope concludes before the scheduled end of the year. Yet 3.7 million aspiring graduates still need diplomas, and no one wants to see an explosion of dropouts.
“This is an international emergency,” said Kathy Hoffman, Arizona’s elected school superintendent. “This is a time when peoples’ lives are in crisis, and we should not be holding back students who were on track to graduate, and on track to move onto higher education, in any way because of the Covid-19 crisis.”The crisis is prompting difficult conversations about how to graduate students who lost valuable instruction to an unpredictable event and what it means to earn a high school diploma. And colleges will have to cope with members of the class of 2020 who may not have fulfilled the normal demands of senior year.
States are adopting distinct approaches that may have uneven results and an uncertain effect on racial disparities that already pockmark climbing U.S. high school graduation rates.
Students in one state might speed to a diploma if their graduation was on track CONTINUE READING: How states are reinventing what it takes to get a high school diploma - POLITICO