Greensburg — The Decatur County School Board held a work session Wednesday night to review upcoming changes to Indiana high school diploma requirements starting with the class of 2016.

Barb Lecher, guidance counselor at North Decatur High School (NDHS), told the board the biggest change facing students will be a requirement of four years of high school math.

"This won't be a huge change for our schools," Lecher said. "We work to encourage students to take math each year anyway, but now students won't be able to skirt around math."

In addition, Lecher explained, pre-Algebra will no longer be offered at the high school level.

"Pre-algebra will be an eighth-grade class only," she said. "The state will require all freshmen to start with Algebra 1."

Lecher predicted that many students will "struggle with that requirement."

As a solution, she explained, she and fellow counselors from NDHS and South Decatur High School (SDHS) are working on an Algebra 1 enrichment course for freshmen who struggle with Algebra 1.

"The intention," Lecher said, "is to allow students to double up and take Algebra 1 and the enrichment class together."

Christy Tebbe, guidance counselor at SDHS, expressed concerns regarding how the new math requirement would impact students who attend the C4 vocational school in Columbus.

"Requiring our C4 juniors and seniors to take math and quantitative reasoning is a little different from what we're used to," Tebbe said.

Tebbe added that the new math requirement would likely present a hardship for Interdisciplinary Cooperative Education (ICE) and Core-40 diploma students, too.

"To be honest," she said, "I don't think we know yet how the new requirement will affect those students. But this is just starting with our incoming freshmen next year, so we have a couple years to figure it out."

Tebbe predicted the new requirements would force counselors, administrators and teachers into "a different way of thinking; a different way of scheduling," to accommodate student needs.

Lecher sounded less optimistic.

"Frankly," she said, "I foresee not as many students attending C4 and ICE. We won't be able to be as flexible regarding C4 and ICE attendance."

Lecher also discussed the fact that, for the first time, Indiana schools will earn money for each technical honors diploma students earn.

According to Lecher, the state currently allots $900,000 for each academic honors diploma.

In order to maximize state dollars, she predicted, schools will likely begin encouraging kids to earn both a technical honors and an academic honors diploma.

"We always work very hard on attracting more technical and academic honors students, anyway," she said. "Now it'll be even more financially beneficial, so the more the better."

Lecher decried flaws in the current state education system that pressure schools to graduate students in four year.

"Every kid that drops out is a mark against you, of course," she said, "but so is every kid who doesn't graduate in four years."

As a result, Lecher said, the school system closely tracks and monitors each incoming freshmen to be sure they graduate in four years.

She called that part of current education policy counterintuitive.

"If we can bring a fifth-year senior back and help them earn a diploma, that should be the goal," she said. "We should strive for every student to earn a diploma no matter how long it takes. But that needs to be worked out at the state level."

After the session, Decatur County School Board superintendent Dan Roach reminded that much of the work-session discussion involved proposed changes and not just definite ones.

"There are certainly definite changes coming with the 2016 freshman class," Roach said. "And parents and students alike need to be aware of that. But much of what we discussed are proposed changes."

"Educational policy has become extremely fluid in the last several years," he continued, "such that policies are continually being changed and tweaked. A new policy put in place for the next school year might be changed or even discarded the year after that."

Roach echoed his guidance counselors, calling the impact of new and ever-evolving policies on C4 and ICE extremely uncertain at the moment.

"One thing's certain," he added. "The high school experience has radically changed in the last 20 years and it's going to keep changing. Parents and students alike need to closely communicate with their schools and guidance counselors to keep apprised of ever-evolving policy."



Contact: Robert Cox at 812-663-3111 x7011.