Chicago won't allow high school students to graduate without a plan for the future

[demmiblue]

Source: The Washington Post



CHICAGO — To graduate from a public high school in Chicago, students will soon have to meet a new and unusual requirement: They must show that they’ve secured a job or received a letter of acceptance to college, a trade apprenticeship, a gap year program or the military.

...

Critics say Emanuel’s idea is an empty gesture that does nothing to address the fact that many teenagers are graduating in ­impoverished, violence-racked neighborhoods with few jobs, or that the most readily accessible community colleges are ill-prepared to meet the needs of first-generation students from low-income families. They also point out that the 381,000-student district laid off more than 1,000 teachers and staff members in 2016, and it is in such difficult financial straits that it struggled to keep its doors open for the final weeks of the school year.

“It sounds good on paper, but the problem is that when you’ve cut the number of counselors in schools, when you’ve cut the kind of services that kids need, who is going to do this work?” said Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union and Emanuel’s longtime political opponent. “If you’ve done the work to earn a diploma, then you should get a diploma. Because if you don’t, you are forcing kids into more poverty.”

Victor Ochoa, a counselor at Carl Schurz High School in northwest Chicago, where students are overwhelmingly Hispanic and poor, said he has a caseload of 400 students and a grab bag of other duties: recruiting eighth-graders to enroll, registering students for classes and summer school, monitoring attendance, administering standardized tests, and helping students deal with crises from homelessness to street violence. Many counselors also serve as special-education coordinators, he said.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/chicago-wont-allow-high-school-students-to-graduate-without-a-plan-for-the-future/2017/07/03/ac197222-5111-11e7-91eb-9611861a988f_story.html?utm_term=.c7cf50cfbda4

[Blue_Adept]

1. oh fuck that

The lawsuits will be many and it'll bleed 'em dry.

[busterbrown]

2. Do u agree with the Premise?

I do... Of course funduing is the issue.. but wouldn’t be nice?

[Blue_Adept]

3. agree that they must present a plan for the future or they can't graduate?

Hell no I don't agree with that.

It's none of their damn business. They went through the process, they earned their diploma. What's the point of this?

[Wounded Bear]

5. No, I don't...

Who really knows "What you gonna do with your life?" at 17-19 yrs old?

This is bullshit. What will they do? Refuse to issue their diplomas? Yeah, that's a good idea. Punish them if they don't have a "plan" to line up with the corporate masters master view of the world.

[tazkcmo]

6. I don't.

Maybe I plan on lounging on my parents' sofa, smoking weed and eating chips for a year. It's my life and I'll do as I please with it. Fuck Emanuel and all he stands for.

[angstlessk]

8. I agree...force high schools to graduate people ready to either go to college

or get a job...what's wrong with that?

Use schools instead of for profit scams to get YOUR folks jobs!

[Demsrule86]

40. What you will get is dispirited students who drop out.

[LisaM]

12. Absolutely not. They earned a degree; they should then hold it.

This is utter nonsense.

[LanternWaste]

31. How do we ensure all students are guaranteed of a job or higher ed directly following graduation?

How do we ensure all students are guaranteed of a job or higher ed directly following graduation; for if that 'premise' cannot be ensured, it's counter-productive at best.

[Demsrule86]

32. No, This is not their business.

What if a kid isn't sure? We are supposed to be a free society.

[busterbrown]

36. Funny..

I always thought our Educational System was geared for 1 purpose.. To prepare our children for their future..
It’s serious business now...Especially due to the lack of fare wages and good jobs..

[Demsrule86]

39. If you have met academic requirements, you should be granted a diploma period.

And a 'graduation plan' is subjective and could be used against the kids...I prefer cold hard numbers ...like a GPA.

[tblue37]

46. No. It is a dominance display disguised as paternalistic concern. It reminds me of

The move to drug test welfare and SNAP recipients.

[busterbrown]

50. Come on theyre not even close..

Snap Reciepents usually have no choice... Poverty breeds poor educational attendence.. Graduating High School these days offers little to the student’s for those who were raised in poverty...

Perhaps a time requirement.. 6 month time limit, before they must be given their diploma...
Most around here are conflating this effort to enhance kid’s chances...to Freaking Charter Schools which are fucking nothing more than a scam!

[Hortensis]

54. Absolutely not, but fascist Gov. Scott Walker would.

Learning and knowledge are not the goal of public education, producing workers for industry is. The inevitable result would be market-driven education to try to "help" the kids be able to graduate.

[MineralMan]

4. My Post High School Plan

I'm going to move to Colorado to work in my brother-in-law's legal marijuana farm. Now, can I have my freaking diploma, dude?

[Wounded Bear]

7. Well, that is a growth industry...

[angstlessk]

10. Now see, that's a plan...diploma granted!

[busterbrown]

37. O.K... so its a system which can be beaten...

As a parent...I would want this program for my kids...
I think time limits might be set... After a year...the diploma must be issued.

[Demsrule86]

41. Absolutely not...why should any kid wait for a diploma that he/she has earned. It is a terrible idea

and will cause kids to drop out.

[LisaM]

38. It's to provide an education. What people do with their education is up to them.

All things considered, I'd rather have an educated population than not. This half-baked idea seems like an enormous incentive for people to drop out.

[Girard442]

9. If you penalize people for failing to do X, then everyone is guaranteed to do X...

...regardless of the obstacles.

On what planet does this actually work?

[angstlessk]

11. What is X?

[Girard442]

15. X being a placeholder for some desirable action or outcome.

Like getting a high school diploma, or losing weight, or driving accident-free. Those kind of things.

[frazzled]

13. It should be noted that the City Colleges of Chicago are free

though some requirements must be met to qualify for the free tuition. These include Harold Washington College, Malcolm X College, Kennedy-King College, Harry S. Truman College, and several others.

I have mixed feelings about this new requirement: on the one hand, it seems a step too far, given that many disadvantaged students will be unable to obtain a job offer or (community) college acceptance; on the other hand, what good is graduating people who have zero next step in their lives? There's no point to a diploma if it leads nowhere except to the streets. On the third hand (I have more hands than you can count when it comes to thinking about social policies like this), it could lead to more dropouts, after a number of years where the dropout rates in CPS have declined steeply.

I guess my thought is that if this new requirement is to be put in place, a really beefed up counseling system needs to be put into place concurrently (though CPS is deeply in the financial hole). It could be volunteer, even. I used to volunteer in the college and career center at my daughter's hight school. All you need is an empty room somewhere, and some dedicated volunteers willing to help kids find a post-HS plan and get it implemented. I'm sure lots of people would be interested.


PS: This is not, as some above in the thread have suggested, about a 17-year-old knowing what to do with their life. It could be just getting a job at a local community nonprofit, a hospital, or McDonalds even: and you don't have to stay at that job, you just have to have a job offer. You have to understand that this city's big problem is with young men post high-school who are on the streets, with nothing to do but cause trouble. Forcing the schools to focus on putting kids on a path after they hand them the diploma will force local nonprofits and businesses and yes, even corporations, to jump in with programs to employ these kids. And that will happen here. People want, theoretically, to help with joblessness, but they have no structure that promotes that. Tying it to CPS will provide that structure. Chance the Rapper, here's your next chance!

[angstlessk]

16. You must be an amazing parent.

[frazzled]

21. Not at all, but I've tried to be a good citizen.

My kids went to (inner city) public schools, and I was always aware that while my own kids were in good shape academically, so many other kids in their school had no support system and needed all the help they could get. So, throughout the years I served as a volunteer classroom assistant in the early grades, an individual tutor in the middle and high-school grades (mostly for immigrant students with shaky English-language skills), and in the HS college and career center. Once, when district budget cuts were threatening to eradicate the "gifted and talented" program at my kid's elementary school, I was asked to call all the board members to protest (since my kids enjoyed that program several times per week). I refused: ESL programs were being equally threatened, and I told them that those had to be fought for first. They were shocked; I knew I was right.

I guess I would not have let my kids choose "sitting home on the sofa smoking weed" as an option after high school (I'm kind of a hard-ass that way). Many kids don't have parents to help them avoid that choice (which kind of turns the idea of gap year into gap life). That's where we all have to step in: schools, community, government. We're not going to solve the dead end otherwise.

[Demsrule86]

42. So we penalize kids who are poor because they can't get into college or they don't have a job...

sounds like a bad idea to me and would lead to a huge drop out rate.

[angstlessk]

14. Write your plan...I will become a drug dealer..

how do you answer that ?

[demmiblue]

20. Wow. n/t

[snooper2]

25. what is wrong with being a drug dealer...No Taxes!

I couldn't sell any of the hard shit, just weed and shrooms... maybe some X

[rocktivity]

33. Actually, even illegally earned income is taxable

a law that has been around since they needed a way to get Al Capone.


rocktivity

[Girard442]

17. No problemo. Gimme $50 and I'll write you a job offer letter.

You want fancy-shmancy title? Hey, for you, we throw it in free.

[rocktivity]

18. Will joining a "Chiraq" street gang qualify?

And what's the alternative -- being kept in school? Will the school be supplying job leads? Will businesses be required to hire them?


rocktivity

[sarisataka]

19. Good incentive...

for kids with low prospects to drop out sooner freeing up funds for kids from better backgrounds

[Blue_Tires]

45. Or just find a way to forge papers for the "plan"

[hunter]

22. I quit high school for college as a 16 year old. Nope, no, not going back.

My middle and high school experience was Lord of the Flies.

Curiously me and my sister who quit high school at 16 too have the high power university degrees. Our siblings, more tolerant of high school bullshit, made it through grade twelve and danced at their senior proms.

I was invited to attend high school graduation ceremonies with older kids I didn't know, but that's because my grandma was suffering a fatal cancer and wasn't likely to be around for my university graduation.

[exboyfil]

27. My daughters basically did college

for their 11th and 12th grade years as well. No AP courses and no dual enrolled courses at the high school (with the exception of my oldest engineering courses, music, and gym (a requirement).

My oldest was able to graduate from a flagship engineering college two years after high school graduation with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering.

My youngest daughter is scheduled to graduate from a hospital affiliated nursing school with a B.S.N. 15 months after high school graduation (75 college credit hours at high school graduation and a 15 month accelerated BSN in which she also added four additional credit hours (over 160 clinical hours) internship.

[hunter]

29. Being a minor sub 18 year old in college was weird.

There was a one unit class for the kids like me, and a couple of professors were not entirely happy having a kid in their class who they had to chaperone and send home parental permission slips for field trips.

I experienced a few AWESOME college field trips as a minor aged human and nascent paleobotanist.

[exboyfil]

30. That was a much harder road than my daughters

Many of their classes were online. I think they might have been 17 for some of the lab classes though (Chemistry, Biology, Microbiology). My youngest was 16 or 17 when she did her CNA class. It was a great experience for her because she met many young women, a lot of them with children already, who were just desperately trying to improve their lives. Her instructor commented how much she preferred teaching these women than doing the high school equivalent class (well worth the dollars I spent for the course). It also helped that it was taught at a satellite location that had a higher minority population.

I remember taking junior college classes as a 16 year old as well. It was only a couple at a time, and it was a little weird. I was fortunate one of them was a liberal arts Physical Science class because my 12th grade Physics was very poorly taught. I would never have survived engineering without that course in my opinion.

[exboyfil]

23. I disagree with this approach

but something could be said for a career class for a semester (or some shorter time period - perhaps part of another course like Civics or Economics or Consumer Math).

I would actually like to see post-high school careers addressed at two points in a student's education. The first being in the first semester in 9th grade (perhaps second semester 8th grade) where decisions on high school course selection can be mapped out and considered in light of career opportunities). The second period of time would be the first semester of 12th grade when final decisions like college and trade school plans are made, different employment situations are being considered etc.

How would Obama's daughter gap year fit into this requirement? I think what a student's post-graduation plans should have nothing to do with getting their degree. The job of the school system is to educate about options and facilitate as much as possible.

[snooper2]

24. damn, just looking at that picture America really needs to address our obesity problem

Or people won't be living long enough to worry about careers or long term future goals.

[tytcuck]

26. good

good

[loyalsister]

28. Sounds good until you consider unintended consequences

As noted, funding is a barrier to making this policy be what I think some intend it to be. I think all students should have IEPs and mentoring to help them acquire skills to navigate the world and options they face after graduation.

But, without a lot of careful development and work this idea is destined to discourage some youth and ultimately leave many behind.

[nikibatts]

34. Right now it appears the "survival" is the best plan.

[Squinch]

35. I love it. Some of the kids I work with never even consider what they are going to do.

[Demsrule86]

43. And that is their right in my opinion. We either are a free country or not.

[Squinch]

52. We don't serve them by not requiring that they consider their future. They're kids. They need

a hand to guide them.

[LittleBlue]

44. Rahm is failing Chicago

How he's still mayor, I don't know. 14 dead and 100+ wounded over 4th of July weekend. We need to step in as a party and find solutions, because Rahm is out of ideas.

Many jobs require a HS diploma. So you need a diploma for a job, but can't get a diploma without a job. How the hell does this make sense? White high schools in the rich areas don't have to worry about this, they can backpack through Europe on a gap year and still get a diploma.

[DrDan]

47. a plan is a great idea - but in no way should it be a graduation requirement

[ileus]

49. I never will understand how people don't know what they're going to do at 18.

By 4th grade I was telling people I wanted to be an engineer. Kids would say things like "drive a train"....

The next 9 years were spent with my eye on the prize, and I never looked back.

[elehhhhna]

51. Yes if everyone was exactly like you it would be a perfect world

[trackfan]

53. I'd still be in high school 40 years later.

I haven't come up with a plan yet.

[Vinca]

55. That was my first thought and I'm at 50 years out.