Chicago Mayor's Policy to Withhold HS Diploma's From Students With No Post-Grad Plans Receives Intense Criticism
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) has received much criticism after unveiling his new policy for graduating public high school students. Starting with the class of 2020, students will have to 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 in order to receive their high school diploma, reported the Washington Post.
With this new policy, Mayor Emanuel said he wants to make the teenagers graduating from the nation’s third-largest school system have a plan for their future to put them on the path towards success.
“We are going to help kids have a plan, because they’re going to need it to succeed,” he said. “You cannot have kids think that 12th grade is done.”
Emanuel’s plan, approved by the Board of Education in late May, has planted Chicago at the center of that debate.
Jermiya Mitchell, 17, a rising senior at Morgan Park High School on the South Side, said she has had few interactions with her guidance counselor. “We never had that conversation about life after high school,” she said. “I would like to have a counselor that really wanted to know what I wanted to do after high school and would help me get there.”
Several critics believe this is not addressing the public school system's larger issues
In 2016, the 381,000-student district laid off more than 1,000 teachers and staff members which is cutting the access students have to mentors.
“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?” Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union and Emanuel’s longtime political opponent told the Washington Post. “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.”
Others felt the school system needs more funding before requiring students to meet these expectations
However, some felt this would be a necessary driving force to empower Chicago's youth
Janice Jackson, the school system’s chief education officer, said the new policy will work by pushing school principals and officials to improve the conditions for students at their schools.
Although 60 percent of students usually have postsecondary plans when they graduate, Jackson believes the schools should not wait for more resources before helping the other 40 percent along.
“There’s a big group in there who aren’t doing a whole lot after they leave high school,” Jackson told the Washington Post. “It’s our responsibility to . . . guide them in the right direction.”
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