by Kayla Farris
Howard University News Service
WASHINGTON – The Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) is reimagining high school graduation requirements in the District – academic standards that have not changed since 2006.
Their new strategic plan, “Recovery to Restoration”, has three phases spanning from 2023 to 2025. Its purpose is to prepare students for life after high school by restructuring coursework and personalizing postsecondary planning. Year one is reserved for landscape analysis with community stakeholders, year two is for drafting and finalizing the D.C.-wide Graduate Profile and year three for approval and adoption of the revised graduation requirements.
Parents like Kathleen Jackson have long awaited this development. As a mom to three boys who were enrolled in D.C. Public Schools (DCPS), she said their family’s experience with secondary education in the District almost destroyed them.
“I am done with secondary education in D.C.,” said Jackson. “Our family’s educational journey was not easy. In fact, I hope that no family has to go through what we went through.”
Jacksons’ sons were adopted from foster care and on the autism spectrum. After two of them struggled academically and socially in DCPS, Jackson decided to enroll her sons at the Harbour School, a private school in Annapolis, Maryland. She said despite finally getting her boys to thrive in a school that catered to their needs, a disagreement between OSSE and the Harbour School kept them from graduating.
The Harbour School confirmed that a dispute about a world language requirement caused them to lose funding from OSSE, “…and the rug was pulled out from about 20 students that made the trek from D.C. to Annapolis every day,” she said.
Due to the lack of funding, the Harbour School was no longer able to assist with transporting students from D.C. to Maryland for class. Jackson said she spent approximately $50,000 in transportation for her kids to be successful in school. Other parents at Harbour even set up a GoFundMe to help, but ultimately, Jackson couldn’t afford the cost of their education.
“As a family, we sacrificed everything. In the end, we settled for certificates of completion because I could no longer afford the transportation,” said Jackson. “This was just more trauma and loss for my boys. They had no control over anything. And this led to acting up at home… everybody heard how unhappy I was.”
There are multiple reasons for the reassessment of graduation criteria. Some say D.C. diplomas don’t always prepare students for life after they walk across the stage.
Ange Pirko, a DCPS teacher, said that one of their students stopped coming to class because he didn’t think his courses aligned with his future.
“Jay wants to be a mechanic. Jay wants to fix cars, and staying in the school system right now – he believes – will not serve him,” said Pirko. “The way the school system is currently designed, it is more advantageous for him to drop out and risk not getting the [General Education Diploma] GED, because that is not what he thinks is actually going to secure his future.”
Pirko said students like Jay would benefit from a curriculum based less on age and more on interest and skill.
“There has to be a way that we can have students like Jay whose aptitudes and career inclinations take them towards more technically skilled jobs, and that is honored… as much as people pursuing other academic interests,” said Pirko.
The OSSE is partnering with stakeholders across D.C. that have experience in challenging traditional education. Dr. Erin Bibo, vice president of strategic initiatives at CityWorks D.C., is a part of the team whose goal is to prepare students for life after graduation.
“I spent over 7 years working [as Deputy Chief of College and Career Programs] at DCPS, and one of my takeaways from classroom observations is how siloed high school students’ core academic courses are, and how far they are from mirroring the interdisciplinary nature of the real world.” said Bibo.
Current D.C. academic Graduation Requirement Regulations are the same today as they were for students who entered the ninth grade in the 2006-2007 school year. A decade later, the High School Graduation Requirements Task Force was assembled to reevaluate how a D.C. diploma would prepare students for postgraduate success.
While the D.C. State Board Of Education unanimously passed the Task Force’s recommendations six years ago; no policy changes have been made by the OSSE. Bibo, who served on the Task Force back in 2017, said policy makers need to focus less on what specific courses make up the requirements, but how students can make their diplomas helpful to them.
“It is just as important, if not more important, for this redesign effort to allow for more flexibility in terms of how high school students meet graduation requirements,” said Bibo. “Doing so will allow our students to more deeply pursue their interests and postsecondary plans, learn in more dynamic and relevant ways, be more prepared for college and career, and, frankly, find school more engaging and personalized.”
One of the Task Force’s recommendations – creating a personalized learning plan for each public school student in the district – is not unique to D.C. According to a study by the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, at least 20 states across the U.S. have created a statewide profile of a graduate – in other words, what skills and abilities each student should possess upon graduation.
Following in their footsteps, the inaugural D.C.-wide Graduate Profile is intended to equip students with college and career readiness, regardless of what that career might be.
“If done well, this undertaking has the potential to reshape the high school experience for our youth and young adults in a way that truly allows us to meet our commitment to them that they will be prepared for college, careers, and life,” said Bibo.
Kayla Farris is a reporter for HUNewsService.com
