Graduation requirements remain, but schools recognize pandemic hardships

After a whirlwind year of remote learning, public health protocols and social isolation, high school seniors in Connecticut are almost ready to graduate.

Despite the challenges of the year, superintendents from across the state said they are beholden to state requirements for high school graduation, so graduation standards will remain fairly consistent statewide. Although many superintendents said they would not reduce students’ credit requirements for graduation, many said their districts would be making additional efforts to help their students cross the finish line.

Some of the most common changes in districts that are taking a different approach include providing extra credit recovery opportunities, waiving community service requirements and eliminating local testing requirements.

“Obviously it is a very challenging environment, but I think for the most part the majority of students have responded well to keeping up with the work and doing what they need to do, and educators have reached out in many different ways to assist students with the requirements,” said Fran Rabinowitz, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents.

Patrice McCarthy, deputy director for the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, said this year’s seniors are farther along in the process of earning credits toward graduation than other high school students at the time the pandemic hit in March 2020. The state has 205 school districts and 1,515 schools with an 88.5 percent four-year cohort graduation rate, according to the state Department of Education. In the 2019-20 school year, the latest year for which information is available on the agency’s data site, there were 41,014 high school seniors in the state.

The state’s current minimum requirement for graduation is 20 credits; when Public Act 10-111 passed in 2010, the expectation was for students in the class of 2018 to need 25 credits to graduate. Following some amendments, that requirement has now been delayed to the class of 2023 — or students currently in the tenth grade.

In anticipation of the change, some school districts, such as New Haven, preemptively increased its minimum graduation requirements.

New Haven’s Board of Education recognized that some students have been distracted from school for various reasons during the first year of the pandemic — including poor internet service, working jobs or taking on child care duties to support their families, or emotional withdrawal — and voted to allow students to graduate with a minimum of 25 credits, while some schools had required more.

Helping students

In Stamford, students at the Academy of Information

Technology and Engineering must earn 25 credits; at the district’s other two high schools, the graduation requirement is the state minimum of 20. District leaders said they have not changed that requirement this year.

After the first quarter of the school year, the district ran a credit recovery program through the online education service Edgenuity for students who were struggling or had attendance issues.

“We don’t wait until summer to say, ‘Oh, look, you failed a bunch of courses, let’s get you caught up,’” said Amy Beldotti, associate superintendent for teaching and learning in Stamford. “We do try to offer kids opportunities during the school year to recover credits so they can graduate in June.”

Nevertheless, school district leaders across the state recognize the pandemic has had an impact on student engagement and performance. One of the most common responses throughout

the state has been for school districts to increase their summertime and online credit recovery options in lieu of waiving graduation requirements.

Such an approach has been taken in Bridgeport, Danbury, Trumbull, Ridgefield, Norwalk, Fairfield and Monroe.

“We are working on plans for high school summer school programs that include a credit recovery program to re-engage students in the core curriculum and provide those who need them with the necessary credits to graduate,” said Norwalk Public Schools spokeswoman Brenda Wilcox Williams.

Norwalk also launched a “twilight academy” this year, providing students opportunities to earn credits during hours outside the school day; New Haven has announced it will use federal aid funding to launch a similar initiative for students.

Changes

In school districts that have made changes to their graduation requirements, one of the first things to go has been a community service graduation requirement.

“The traditional community

service opportunities have been limited by the pandemic, and I think it is appropriate to recognize that reality and make those adjustments so students aren’t penalized for something that wasn’t possible to engage in,” said McCarthy, of CABE.

Because of the added stress and inconsistent exposure to classroom learning, several school districts have placed less of an emphasis on standardized testing, or have eliminated it altogether this year.

At Regional School District 12, which includes Bridgewater, Roxbury and Washington, Superintendent Megan Bennett said students are required to complete a project as a graduation requirement. Bennett said the district adjusted after it became clear that students would not be able to hold public events as they had in prior years.

Anthony Serio, superintendent of the Gilbert School in Winsted, said every student has been on “some form of academic assistance” this year, but the school’s project-based learning structure is a way for students to remain engaged.

“It is a lot of fun for them,” he said.