Weekly Update

_{Edgar Soto, a senior at Concord High School, in Elkhart, Indiana, is gaining workforce experience through an apprenticeship with the company Alpha Systems. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report}

How Indiana revamped high school

The numbers were discouraging, and in some cases getting worse. Nearly 30 percent of Indiana’s high schoolers were chronically absent in 2022. Only about 52 percent of students in the state enrolled in college in 2023, a 12-percentage-point drop in seven years. Fewer students were pursuing other paths, too: The share of students enlisting in the military, for example, declined by 41 percent from 2018 to 2022.

When Katie Jenner toured the state after becoming education secretary in 2021, she heard from many students who said they simply didn’t value high school or see how it would help them. “That was really hard to hear,” Jenner said. “We had to look in the mirror and say, ‘OK, this is the reality. Let’s do better.’”

Jenner and her team began redesigning what high school looks like in Indiana, in an effort to make it more relevant to young people’s futures and help them gain a better grasp of career paths. For too long, she and others argued, kids had been pushed to plan for four-year college, yet only about half of seniors actually enrolled, and those who did go often dropped out before graduating.

When a draft of the plan was released in early 2024, it drew fierce protest from many parents and educators who worried the state was prioritizing workforce learning over academics. Jenner and her staff reworked the proposal, eventually crafting a plan that alleviated some, though not all, of the concerns.

The “New Indiana Diploma” — which was signed into law in April and goes into effect for all incoming first-year students this academic year — gives students the option to earn different “seals” in addition to a basic diploma, depending on whether they plan to attend college, go straight to work or serve in the military.

How this Wisconsin school built high-end training sites on campus

While the unemployment rate of Rock County, which includes Beloit, is 3.6 percent, only slightly higher than the state’s 3.2 percent, there’s a worker mismatch in the city, according to Drew Pennington, its economic development director.

Every day, 14,000 city residents travel outside of Beloit to work, while the same number commute into the city to fill mostly higher-paying jobs, said Pennington.

So when Beloit decided to revamp its public high school in 2018, CTE and work-based learning were at the forefront of the transformation.

The 1,225-student school now has three academies that cover 13 different career paths. After ninth grade, students choose to concentrate in an area, which means taking several courses in a specific field. Students also have the option to do work-based learning, which can mean internships, a youth apprenticeship or working at high-end simulated job sites inside the school.

Adding bus stops, serving biscuits and gravy, and catching butterflies

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Student veterans and advisers say VA cuts are derailing their educations.

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