A task force charged with evaluating Kansas' graduation requirements sees an opportunity to increase flexibility for the state's high school students.
The Kansas State Board of Education's Graduation Requirements Task Force on Tuesday briefed the board on the past year of its work.
The task force, co-chaired by board member Jim McNiece and Basehor-Linwood High School principal Jarred Fuhrman, told the state board it still needed a few more months to develop specific recommendations for the board to take up at a future meeting.
However, preliminary recommendations from the group would give students broader latitude in picking how classes count toward the state's credit hour requirement, while also requiring students to pick up experiences outside the classroom to supplement their high school transcripts.
All changes would rely heavily on Individual Plans of Study, or high school course plans that the Kansas State Department of Education strongly recommends school districts implement for each of their students.
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Recommendation would keep 21 unit floor,re-organize howclasses count
Currently, Kansas school districts must require their students to pass at least 21 units in specific subjects to graduate, although districts are allowed to require more than that.
In Kansas, a unit generally measures a year's worth of learning in a class, with two regular semesters adding up to one whole unit. The task force's initial recommendation would be to maintain the current21-unit floorbut adjust how various classes count toward that minimum.
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Classes would be reorganized into a new classification system, to better align with the skill sets schools hope to teach students, rather than the specific subjects, said Christie Meyer, a subcommittee chair on the task force and principal at Eisenhower High School in Goddard.
Those groups include:
•Communications (4 units)—Instead of requiring fourwhole units of English language arts, that requirement would drop down to 3.5 units, with a half unit of communications (such as speech, debate, forensics or public speaking) rounding out the category to fourunits.
•Society and Humanities (4)—Rather than threeunits in history and government and oneunit in fine arts, this requirement would be restructured around 2.5 units of social studies (world and U.S. history, government), 0.5 units of fine arts (music, dance, art, theater) and oneadditional "humanities/arts" unit.
• STEM(7) — threeunits of science and threeunits of math are needed to graduate under current requirements, and the task force recommends keeping those sixand adding oneunit of an elective inscience, technology, engineering or mathematics. Computer science could also fill this role.
• Employability and life skills (6) — Current graduation standards require oneunit of physical education and sixother electives. The task force's initial recommendation would be to require only 0.5 units of physical education but require students also specifically take 0.5 units of health, 0.5 units of personal finance or financial literacy, as well as 4.5 electives that align with their post-high school goals.
"It's just allowing a little bit more flexibility in (students') options, depending on how they meetthe students needs," Meyer said.
Post-secondary assets could benew requirement forhigh school seniors
Since it was charged with evaluating graduation requirements, the task force has toyed with the idea of requiring post-secondary assets, or outside-the-classroom experiences that still hold value for students as they move into post-high school colleges and careers.
The task force's recommendation on Tuesday was to require students to earn two or more post-secondary assets from either of two categories, including:
• Career and real world— This would include experiences such as apprenticeships, community service, work and agricultural experiences, industry-recognized certifications, Eagle Scout and Girl Scout Gold Award ranks, Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps and 4-H recognition, among others.
• Academic — These would be school-related experiences or accomplishments outside of specific letter grades, including higher-than-average ACT scores, college credit hours, high state assessment scores, International Baccalaureate program completion, etc.
The key for either category is that districts would be given the ability to determine what could count as a post-secondary asset, Meyer said.
"What works in in western Kansasmay not work in Kansas City," she said. "What's good for students in Topeka may be different than what's good for students in Wichita."
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Graduation flexibilityexists, but someschool districts don't realize it
One of the key things the task force found is that while Kansas school stakeholders want more flexibility for students to be able to graduate, many don't realize school principals, superintendents and school boards already have the authority to make those decisions at the local level.
School administrators can already grant course credit for experiences and needs that aren't tied to specific class time, since units are tied to "successful demonstration of competency and knowledge of a content area," Fuhrman said.
As far as the overall initial changes, McNiece said the task force has only started "scratching the surface" of what a potential overhaul could look like.
He said the task force needs additional time to work with the state education department and other stakeholders to determine what changes could be both feasible and effective.
Members of the overall State Board of Education were receptive to the overall concept of the graduation requirement recommendations. But they emphasized that with any added flexibility, they'd want to maintain rigor.
"Some people might say, 'Well, the only thing you're doing is making it easier for kids to graduate,'" McNiece said. "No, actually, we're making it more difficult — not in the sense that it's difficult to accomplish, but thatit's difficult in terms of challenging them to look at school differently and to think about their future differently."
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The Kansas Board of Regents, which oversees the state's higher education system, in April had passed a resolution calling on the State Board of Education to require fourunits of math and English language arts each for high school students to graduate.
They also urged the State Board to require students to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and to take at least one class in computer science.
Board member Ann Mah said the Regents' resolution seemed to indicate the higher education agency was shifting most responsibility for Kansas students' success in college to the state's high schools.
"The Board of Regents really laid it on us to keep the rigor in high school because they took it all away in college," she said.
Even a small change to the graduation requirements would be notable, since the last time the State Board of Education made any such change was more than 20 years ago, when it voted to add a fine arts credit.
A more recent task force charged with evaluating graduation requirements ultimately decided against recommending any changes.
However, any changes would only take effect after the current class of freshman at the time of the change graduate. In other words, a vote to change graduation requirements next school year would tentatively affect the class of 2027.
Rafael Garcia is an education reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached at rgarcia@cjonline.com. Follow him on Twitter at @byRafaelGarcia.
