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Education Businesses Government United States

Chicago To Make Future Plans a Graduation Requirement (thehill.com) 399

Posted by BeauHD from the plan-ahead dept.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanual's recently approved plan will require high school students show their plans for the future before obtaining their diploma. "Students will soon 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 graduate," reports The Hill. From the report: "We are going to help kids have a plan, because they're going to need it to succeed," Emanuel told the Post. "You cannot have kids think that 12th grade is done." But critics say the district may not be able to provide mentoring to help needy students when the rule takes effect in 2020. "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, told the 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."
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Chicago To Make Future Plans a Graduation Requirement

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  • Means well, but... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanual's recently approved plan will require high school students show their plans for the future before obtaining their diploma.

    One of those "means well" but it's not going to work as well as he thinks. I remember even I straight out of high school wasn't absolutely sure what I was going to do.

    • Re:Means well, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 ) * on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @08:53PM (#54752725)
      Need a high school diploma to get a decent job, but can't get the diploma until you have a job. How to make more burger flippers.

      • No, a high school diploma is worthless. And I don't mean that people are looking for a college degree to get a job.

        I've found there are quite a number of means to prove your value to an employer. There's a lot of high school equivalency tests out there. Places offer what is essentially an IQ test for showing reading, 'riting, 'rithmatic to potential employers. A lot of these tests are "free" in that the state will pay for it for anyone that qualifies for welfare or unemployment insurance. There's the S

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Hell, I finished high school 23 years ago and I still am not sure what I want to do. I've had wildly varying and interesting jobs that have taken me all over the world and I wouldn't trade that for anything.

    • Re:Means well, but... (Score:4)

      by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @10:38PM (#54753443)

      I knew a lot of people in high school whose plan was to get married. Honest. Then there were those who stayed home to help care for ailing family.

      If they only needed to articulate a plan this would be ok, but to actually have secured a job, training, college, etc, that's suddenly very difficult. The economy sucks right now, and it may very well suck even more in the future if employment rates fall. What do you do if all of your job applications are rejected? You can't even get going on a job while still actively studying in high school, no one's going to let you skip class to go to a job interview, and if you start job hunting early who's going to want to hire someone who can't start until summer?

      Then the catch-22 of not being able to get a job without diploma in hand, and can't get a diploma without the job offer in writing.

      Maybe best bet if grades are decent is get a spot at a junior college as tuition is still cheap and you don't have to actually attend once you get the high school diploma. But if the grades are good enough to normally graduate from high school, but not good enough to get in a JC (a C- average) then what?

      I never heard of a gap year program. Everyone I know who did gap year just did it with no plan and certainly no formal program, and they did the gap year precisely because they had no plan.

      Maybe what this requirement will do is increase the number of people taking the GED test.

      • Great points, personally I'd bet that this rule results in the local community colleges see a jump in the number of HS Seniors who come in and pay their $25 enrollment fee, just so they can show that they have been accepted to a college. But who then don't actually enroll in any classes.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Calydor ( 739835 )

      What are you talking about? It's a perfect plan!

      If you get a job you get a high school diploma.
      If you don't get a job you enter the High School Dropout statistic instead.

      This way statistics can more easily point to the fact that getting an education (which can be really expensive with student loans etc.) is the only way to get a job. Stay in school, kids!

  • Ass-backwards? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @08:13PM (#54752397)

    This seems ass-backwards. Let's hold students back because we don't want to hold them back. Isn't the point to successfully get out of "school" (not drop out) as soon as possible? Won't this just lead to more dropouts?

    • Re:Ass-backwards? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sexconker ( 1179573 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @08:21PM (#54752455)

      The goal is to keep more cattle in the academia industrial complex because the massive debt they accumulate, and the years they waste not entering the workforce, help the corporate masters strengthen their grip.

    • Probably depends on a bunch of variables. Like how much value a diploma actually adds over a dropout for one. I'm revealing my privilege, but I have no idea whether these days graduating high school actually gets you any better job than not having one does.

      If out of a hundred students, ten more students drop out with this rule, but ten more have a next step lined up, that depends on the value of a diploma. If it's "nothing" then that's a great trade. If dropout is absolutely unemployable forever while a

  • Its funny how the detractors (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Its funny how the detractors of this scheme have identified that there will be problems, the thing about having a process is that you can identify the problems and address them appropriately, which will be substantially better than the status quo.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Rockoon ( 1252108 )
      So what you are saying is:

      Lets create a bunch of problems. Then we get to solve those problems.

  • Excellent (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @08:21PM (#54752469)
    This is really an excellent thing to do. If they have the resources in counselors to handle it, it's really a great idea, and it could be a real help to the US education system at large. So many of the country's political, social, environmental, and economic problems come from people not thinking ahead. I'd love to see this go into place. I think this would help knock some sense into a lot of people who've never stopped to think for a few minutes about the future. I think something this simple could really nudge a generation of kids into some basic thoughtfulness.

    • Re:Excellent (Score:5, Interesting)

      by somenickname ( 1270442 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @09:38PM (#54753089)

      This is really an excellent thing to do. If they have the resources in counselors to handle it, it's really a great idea,

      Well, it should be fairly easy to gauge whether or not they have enough counselors to handle it. Just watch the stats on high school graduation rate. My guess is that, in a place like Chicago, they are just about to plummet. It's kind of shocking to think that they are going to gamble the future of a generation of children based on whether or not they have enough competent councilors. But, sure, if they do have enough, it'll be glorious!

    • Re:Excellent (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MtHuurne ( 602934 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @09:59PM (#54753237) Homepage

      Having kids think about the future is a good idea. Making it a requirement for graduation is not, in my opinion.

      Graduation is supposed to mark that the student has sufficiently mastered what they were supposed to learn. Maybe you could argue that "thinking about the future" is a skill that schools should be teaching, but then the way to test that would be to for example let them write an essay about it, not to require letters of acceptance.

      What rubs me in the wrong way is that the school would have criteria for what are considered acceptable plans for the future. They would not only be judging whether the student has thought about the future, but also the decision itself.

      • How this will probably get implemented is that the students have to write an essay about their future plans. Anything that is written legibly and doesn't say "I wan b a dope dilla" will get a passing grade.
        • Just pointing out that planning to be a drug dealer meets the criterion for having a future plan.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by swb ( 14022 )

            And it would actually be a legitimate entrepreneurial path in Colorado and several other states, perhaps even Illinois some day.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      It is worthless. Anyone can register for community college. You can probably pay on a plan where you pay 10%, get a note, and graduate, and then drop all the courses. That would likely be under $100, and that is if you don't get financial aid or a loan. Every public school I knows makes everyone fill ou a FASFA. Now the kid has $500 of debt they can't get rid of without paying, acruiing at high interest rates.

      Enlistment in the military is the simplest option. Send a certified retraction letter so it arr

    • This is really an excellent thing to do.

      It's a terrible thing to do. The reason school kids don't think ahead is that they never need to: there are close to zero consequences for not thinking ahead throughout school. We had a school in Alberta fire a physics teacher for giving zeros when students did not hand in assignments even after cajoling and extensions because it was school policy never to give zeros. So there is no need to plan your time to get homework done because there are no consequences when you don't.

      Requiring students to present

    • This is really an excellent thing to do.

      No it's not. It forced people to make rash decisions to get a diploma which can lock them into something they don't want to do.

      I didn't know what to do highschool, so I defaulted to the "I have no fucking idea" degree and did business management. It wasn't until I was in my mid 20s that I realised engineering is tickles my fancy.

      Yay wasted degree, more education debt, and all those other good things.

  • This is fucking stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @08:34PM (#54752563)
    It took me a couple years after high school to figure out what I wanted to do. Started out EE, then computer science, finally got a degree in Math.

    If, at 18, I'd had to lay out my future plans they would have been somewhere along the lines of "smoke a lot of dope. Get laid. Find money to pay for weed and women".

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It took me a couple years after high school to figure out what I wanted to do. Started out EE, then computer science, finally got a degree in Math.

      Did you do all of that in a place called "college"? Because that's ok, according to this plan.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      For me, it was entomology and then I decided to go to CS.

    • It doesn't say you have to do your plan, just that you have to have a plan. If in senior year of high school you thought you'd end up an EE and put that down as your plan, but then switched to CS and then math along the way, you met the requirements just fine.

      This is such a ridiculously low bar. Basically any answer besides your "smoke a lot of dope" joke gets a passing grade. It's little more than asking "what do you want to be when you grow up" (with the additional part being "and how do you think you're

  • where does this end (Score:3)

    by esarjeant ( 100503 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @08:34PM (#54752569) Homepage

    So will it be acceptable if your college of choice now requires that you secure a job or post-graduate program before you can graduate there too? Imagine the awkward conversations you could have with the hiring manager; "So do you have a college degree?"... "Um, sortof"

    Rather than a graduation requirement for high school, maybe high school seniors could use this kind of preparation to boost their grade. If you are able to secure work, vocational training or some other post-high school education then you are entitled to an additional 0.5 points added directly to your GPA.

  • Perhaps Chicago would be better to put these resources towards making sure all of its children survive to graduation [chicagotribune.com] before spending more money the city doesn't have forcing them to make plans for what comes next.

  • Not Consonant with a Free People (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cervesaebraciator ( 2352888 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @08:43PM (#54752627)

    Those 18 year olds are free men and women. Neither Chicago, nor the State of Illinois, nor the Federal government own them. This proposal, however, presumes too much. One must have a diploma at minimum to participate in much of society. But now this paternalistic body speaks to these young men and women as if to say, "Before you can receive this academic certification, you must prove your willingness to offer years of your life to a corporate master (i.e. find an employer who will deign to accept you), a military hierarchy (with the concomitant possibility of losing your life), or to a bank (in the form of bankruptcy-proof student loans). The wealthy, of course, will be excepted by means of gap-year programs but you, peasant, you must swear fealty."

    I cannot deny the practical value of a proposal like this. It's certainly there. But I do deny the right of the state to gainsay an adults freedom to choose either to work or not work, to go to college or to spend a few years mooching off his willing parents, to take on debt or hang out in the basement writing or inventing or starting a business or playing video games.

    • Re:Not Consonant with a Free People (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @09:02PM (#54752811)

      It would be better if there was a policy (with funding) that required schools to provide sufficient guidance services to all graduates who request them to help them find that first job, apprenticeship program, or post-secondary institution that will take them. Guidance services that should probably start in their freshman high school year.

      "Do this difficult adult thing, kid, or we will hobble your future" is nasty. "Here, let me help you do this difficult thing because that piece of paper alone won't cut it" isn't.

    • You like formality, don'tcha? Regardless, I think your point is moot as the plan doesn't seem to be at all what you're describing. The actual description sounds a lot more reasonable: you need to have something, anything more concrete than "I dunno, chill with my crew, I guess" lined up after graduation. That doesn't seem like a bad thing.

      • You like formality, don'tcha?

        Nah. That's just the way I talk when something aggravates me. Remember, the root of the word 'expletive' is 'to fill out'. I just use different filler.

        That doesn't seem like a bad thing.

        Again, I don't deny that it makes some practical sense. It's when we get to the principles of the thing that I object. Let's consider this case as a thought experiment:

        An 18 year old girl is preparing to graduate from a Chicago school. She's a diligent, straight-A student. She has a 20 year o

        • TL;DR tell me where you found the evidence that they wouldn't allow your stay-at-home mom example. I saw a non-detailed news story that listed examples of future plans (school, work, military, etc.) but nothing that claimed to be exhaustive.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Yeah it stinks when people come us with requirements to get things. They should just hand out diplomas to anyone. No requirements.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by eddeye ( 85134 )

      But I do deny the right of the state to gainsay an adults freedom to choose either to work or not work, to go to college or to spend a few years mooching off his willing parents, to take on debt or hang out in the basement writing or inventing or starting a business or playing video games.

      That same state paid for the kids education. 12-13 years of public schools paid with state tax dollars to reach graduation. Requiring the kid to do something in return for that massive gift isn't unreasonable. Some sch

    • The wealthy, of course, will be excepted by means of gap-year programs but you, peasant, you must swear fealty.

      I'm pretty sure the wealthy will be exempt by the nature of going to a private school, not public school.

      Also, "have a plan" is pretty vague, especially if it allows for a gap year. Tell the counselor that you are going to work for your uncle in his corner store, even if there is no job. Or corner store. Or uncle. Does the mayor think that schools won't find an "out" on this to avoid raising dropout rates? I think that the high schools will start doing summer programs for those that don't have a "plan"

  • I find this horrifying (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @08:45PM (#54752645)
    and it's the kind of thing that makes me think there's something genuinely evil behind it. There's no benefit here. If a kid doesn't have problems in life they'll be college bound. But a kid who does just got a whole new set of problems to worry about. More friction at home. More fights.

    As for 'counselors' my kid just graduated. Her counselors were worse than useless. Overworked. Under trained and under resourced. They knew most of the kids were boned and made no secret of it. And this was in one of the best schools in the city. What I'm saying is any kid that doesn't have amazing parents (or at least rich ones) is screwed. Oh, and speaking of rich parents if you're the kind of rich brat that gets to travel for a year you can easily get exempted from this.

    My guess is this is the local businesses looking to get cheap labor from desperate kids who now must have a job to graduate. We'll probably see more 'internships' where you're working full time for little or no pay. I can't think of another reason to push something this awful and this obviously unpopular. If anyone else knows what evil thing is behind this let me know.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Look, as a community-college educator in a different part of the country (and who participates in academic conferences on this sort of thing): it's none of that. It's a desperate cry for help at the fact that most students sit glassy-eyed through the entirety of their K-12 and now community college years, having no idea why they should bother trying at any of it. No one fails classes anymore. Effectively no one fails to get a high school diploma. No one is denied placement at a community college ("open admi

      • lots of kids fail. I just put a kid through high school and it was brutal. And if you're not a) well-to-do b) a sports kid or c) rocking a 4.0+top 10 percentile SAT you're not going to college. You won't be able to raise the funds. My kid is doing it because we borrowed a shit load of money _and_ we're devoting just about every spare penny to the costs those loans don't cover. And yes, we got Pell Grants, a scholarship and some tutition wavers. Ever since Regan/Clinton defunded the universities college _dev

  • So this is basically conscription in disguise, right?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      If this was book or movie script about how a gov would do this?
      Feed the diploma mills offering loans for the students with academic skills. Take the loan for the freedom to select a course or the gov gets to decide on a job.
      A back door draft as a last resort to get the papers you qualified for released by the gov.
      That accredited trade apprenticeship or a gap year program won't be free so someone is making some money looking after the "students".

      Take a loan or accept a free gov grant?
      Go to war. Stop

  • "High school: To get your diploma, you have to show us your job offer first."

    "Prospective employer: Sorry, to apply for this job, you have to show us your diploma first."

  • Better yet - educate! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 ) on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @09:10PM (#54752879) Journal
    How about just focusing on making sure they can read the newspaper, write at an equivalent level, perform basic math as needed to balance a checkbook, do basic geometry, learn about US history (at the very least - ideally world history as well), and have two years of science classes - biology, chemistry, physics? Oh - and can actually PASS the course without having "adjustments" made for life experiences. In essence - make sure they EARNED their degree, proving a minimal level of educational achievement. What they do with the degree after that is none of your concern, Rahm...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swell ( 195815 )

      "perform basic math as needed to balance a checkbook..."

      Cute; I remember checkbooks. I used one as recently as last year. Geometry? I can't recall using that in recent decades. History yes. Most of those subjects will continue to be important.

      But none are a substitute for TFA. Young people need to learn what opportunities will be available to them and how to take advantage of them. It will be difficult because few teachers or school administrators know trends as well as we here do. Someone from Slashdot wil

  • and overworked Chicago paper shufflers roll their eyes, stamp them "complete" and move on.

    Nothing changes.

  • That's an unconstitutional invasion of privacy. Good luck. No wonder Chicago is such a shit-hole.

  • So doing nothing with your life if OK, as long as you spend oodles of money doing it?
    Bumming around Europe getting tens of thousands of dollars into debt is fine, but exploring America or just hanging around is not acceptable. God forbid these children be allowed to exist for a single moment without someone telling them what to do.

  • Or earlier. Each year review the economic realities, employment trends and future forecasts with the students. Each student must balance

    Interests,
    Abilities and
    Future Potential.

    Certain young people, for instance may have great Interest in a sports career. They may even have some Ability. But they need to be told about the reality that only one in a million will make those million$ that they dream of. Almost no Future Potential.

    I used to date a hot girl who worked in a strip joint. She understood that her loo

  • The thought that Chicago (part of a state that hasn't had a budget in 2 years) will have enough guidance people to make this work is laughable. There is something deeply sinister about holding the diplomas hostage to the state's view of what you should be doing with your life.

    Offering the students help with college or job finding? Definitely should be doing. Making them take classes on relevant things like resume writing? Probably a good idea.

    Forcing them to go down a path approved by politicians? NOT OK.

    I'

  • Why is that? Why are we training people to wait idly for jobs that may not come? Why are we not teaching them how to make more jobs?

  • I think I understand the reasoning for this. Last I read on the subject, the only indicator significantly correlated with academic success was "parents talking to their children about their future". So, they make 'thinking about your future' mandatory, in an attempt to improve grades/standardized test scores/higher education rates.

  • What colleges will they push you towards, and what kickbacks do the schools and/or government get for dong so.

    Lots of kids starting to wake up to how much pointless debt most of them are wracking up in college, but the colleges will not go down quietly... you'll see more deals like this to herd the cattle into the slaughterhouse (metaphorically speaking for the slow among you).

  • Plan:

    1. Graduate
    2. Invent time machine.
    -------

    As if our broken education system needs anymore reach into the lives of our young people.

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  • "You cannot have kids think that 12th grade is done."

    If a high school education isn't enough to be considered having met the base level for training required for "the real world", the free public education children are guaranteed needs to include post-secondary education.

  • CPS has trouble graduating kids ALREADY. Less than 75% actually graduate.
    Over half of the graduates are simply not able to survive in college.
    And about 1/3rd of the remainder require extensive remedial courses before moving on to actual collegiate level classes.

    This is CPS's way of using a trebuchet to fire the cart WAYYY out in front of a very sickly, spavined old horse.

    All they're doing is setting these kids up for failure.

  • What choices? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ai4px ( 1244212 ) on Thursday July 06, 2017 @09:19AM (#54755625)

    What about a girl completing high school who just wants to marry and have some kids? Being a homemaker doesnt seem to be one of the prescribed choices! This is the central planner way of micromanaging everyone's life. If the kids show competency required to finish high school, give them their diploma. Not everyone knows what they want to be, nor does everyone actually become what they profess to want to be. I remember as a kid hearing about communist Russia dictating who would be what when they grew up. Seems we are moving in that direction - for the betterment of the dear citizens of course.

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