What we know about Poudre School District's proposal to change graduation requirements

Poudre School District is considering changing some of its graduation requirements to provide students more flexibility in their high school education.

Students would still need to successfully complete 240 credits, including the 40 now required in language arts and 30 apiece in mathematics and science, district officials said. And they would still be required to take financial literacy, a graduation requirement that’s unique to PSD among school districts along Colorado’s Front Range.

But they would have more options to fulfill the required number of credits in social studies; physical education or health and wellness; and fine and applied arts, three members of the district’s leadership team confirmed Friday to the Coloradoan.

Any changes to the district’s graduation requirements would have to be approved by the PSD Board of Education and would begin with the graduating class of 2026. The changes would not impact this year’s juniors or seniors, the district’s chief information officer, Madeline Noblett, said Friday.

A draft proposal that has been shared in more than a dozen meetings with groups of administrative and instructional staff and district advisory committees has been revised multiple times based on feedback from those groups, PSD Chief Institutional Effectiveness Officer Dwayne Schmitz, Assistant Superintendent Julie Chaplain and Noblett said.

The latest version will be shared publicly at community engagement sessions scheduled for 7-8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 27, in the school board meeting room at the Johannsen Support Services Complex, 2407 Laporte Ave., and 7-8:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 29, at the PSD Future Ready Center at the north entrance to Foothills Mall, 215 E. Foothills Parkway.

They will be revised again, if warranted, based on feedback from those sessions, Schmitz, Chaplain and Noblett said, before being presented to the Board of Education for the required approval.

Why are PSD's graduation requirements being changed?

The primary reason, district officials said, is to keep up with the times, allowing PSD students to participate in an increasing number of programs that have become available to high school students in recent years. Those include concurrent enrollment programs that allow students to earn college credit for courses they take while still in high school; Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and ROTC classes; and internships and apprenticeships, among others.

Those opportunities are too often limited, students have said, by graduation requirements mandating specific courses.

“So many amazing options have opened up for kids, it seems appropriate to allow them to access those options,” Schmitz said.

Students generally perform better when they have some say in their educational path, Schmitz and Chaplain said. They can take more courses that interest them and match their post-high school plans, whether that be a career in the trades, earning professional certification at a community college, or attending a four-year college or university.

District officials hope that increased engagement will raise the district’s graduation rates to a level that better aligns with its strong showing on standardized tests and college preparedness.

PSD’s four-year graduation rate for 2022-23 was 86.9%, putting the district well above the statewide average of 83.1% but well below its self-identified peer districts of Boulder Valley (91.4%), Cherry Creek (90.3%) and St. Vrain (93.3%) as well as neighboring Thompson (91.1%) and Windsor-Severance’s Weld RE-4 (92.7%). PSD graduation rates for students of color, students with disabilities, English-language learners and economically disadvantaged students have been consistently lower than statewide averages in each of those areas over the past three to four years, data from the Colorado Department of Education shows.

PSD students’ average scores on the SAT, a college-readiness exam, in both evidence-based reading and writing and math have been significantly higher each of the past five years than each of those districts other than Boulder Valley, according to state education department data. PSD also performs extremely well, Schmitz said, relative to other Colorado school districts on the success of its graduates in college in data compiled and published online by the Colorado Department of Higher Education.

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Colorado law requires teaching of genocide and Holocaust

A 2020 state law requiring that students learn about genocide and the Holocaust in a course required for high school graduation, as chosen by individual school districts, is also impacting the timing of potential changes in PSD’s requirements.

The Colorado Department of Education incorporated teaching about the Holocaust and genocide into its state academic standards for social studies, which were approved in November 2022 by the State Board of Education.

PSD’s draft proposals have added a required 10 hours of world history, which would include the Holocaust and genocide, within the social studies requirement.

How many credits does a PSD student earn per course?

Under the academic block plan used in all of PSD’s traditional high schools, students receive five credits, or hours, for the successful completion of each course each quarter. So, for the world history requirement above, a student would need to take two classes to meet that requirement.

School days consist of four blocks each day, allowing students to take a maximum of 20 credits during each of the four nine-week quarters in the school year.

What else does Colorado require for high school graduation?

The new requirement for students to learn about genocide and the Holocaust is one of just two state-mandated graduation requirements in Colorado. The other is a course in civics that was put into law by the state legislature in 2004.

All other requirements are up to local school districts, a state official confirmed last week. However, the Colorado Department of Education does provide guidelines districts can use to set their graduation requirements. And CDE requires students who are graduating to demonstrate their college or career readiness by at least one state-approved measure in reading, writing and communication; and one in mathematics.

Don’t colleges expect more of high school graduates?

Yes, they do. But the point of updating the graduation requirements, PSD officials said, is the recognition that not all high school graduates go on to a four-year college.

For those who do, the state publishes recommended requirements that will provide “a high school course mix and rigor guidelines for students planning to attend any of Colorado’s public four-year colleges or universities,” according to the Colorado Department of Higher Education’s website.

Current Higher Education Admissions Recommendations, or HEAR guidelines, include:

• Four years of English.

• Four years of mathematics, which must include Algebra I and II and geometry or equivalents.

• Three years of physical science, including two lab-based units.

• Three years of social sciences, including at least one unit of U.S. or world history.

• One year of world or foreign language.

• At least two years of academic electives.

Keeping in mind that PSD's traditional high schools are on block system, a year in those guidelines is equivalent to 10 credit hours.

PSD’s current graduation requirements meet all of the HEAR guidelines other than math, as do all versions of the proposed new requirements, Schmitz said. PSD’s requirement for 30 credits, or three years, of math matches those of most every other school district along the Front Range and exceeds Boulder Valley’s by 10 credits.

The HEAR guidelines for math are currently being reviewed by a task force and could be changed soon, said Carl Einhaus, Colorado Department of Higher Education’s senior director for student success and P-20 alignment.

“What we’re really looking for in math is that they’re proficient up through Algebra II,” Einhaus said. “We’re in conversations about how to best guide students, acting upon what math pathway should be taken based upon what their career goals are. Not every career will require calculus, so why are we forcing students down a calculus pathway? Maybe statistics would be more beneficial.”

Will these changes eliminate teaching positions and save money?

No, Noblett said.

“That has never been part of the discussion,” she said. “This is about being able to respond to the mandates from the state as well as, and most importantly, create a system for our students where they have agency to get that personalized high school education.”

The proposed changes don’t reduce the total number of credit hours or classes needed to earn a PSD diploma, so there’s no reason to expect it to have an impact on enrollment. Some teaching assignments within specific buildings will likely be affected by the classes students choose to take, but the overall staffing numbers within a school should not be impacted.

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So, where will students find more flexibility in the new requirements?

Specifics have not yet been determined, Schmitz and Chaplain said.

In general, though, the proposals under consideration would give students about 20 additional credits of flexibility in meeting graduation requirements, they said.

Proposals that have been put forth generally eliminate the current requirements for five hours of humanities and five hours of economics, reduce the current requirement for 15 hours of physical education or health and wellness and modify the current requirement for 10 hours of fine and applied arts to also allow practical arts, they said.

Students would still need 240 total credit hours, but they’d have more ways to meet the requirements within each subject area. PSD increased the number of credit hours required for graduation from 220 to 240 beginning with the graduating class of 2015, Noblett said.

“People like to be creators, not just following along and doing what everyone else says they must,” Schmitz said.  “That will bring the best effort forward of every student, every kid will bring their best. And by doing that, you’ll have better outcomes.

“I’m confident in our staff’s ability to support kids, I totally am. Instructionally, socially, emotionally, our staff are experts at supporting kids. If kids show up engaged in what’s going on and trying to make strides toward something they find meaningful, I think we’ll hit the sweet spot with helping as many kids as possible with public education to get through to the same opportunities with that PSD diploma that has high integrity.

“It’s about engagement. It’s about student agency. That’s our big bet.”

What if that bet fails and learning suffers?

Schmitz and Chaplain insist PSD will continue to gather data, monitor student progress and achievement both during and after graduation, and compare that to the state’s highest-performing districts, its self-identified peer districts, neighboring districts and statewide averages.

Additional recommendations will be made based on those findings, they said.

“There’s a lot of things we’re going to pay attention to and not take for granted as we move forward, no matter what decision the board makes," Schmitz said. " … But we’re actually expanding opportunities, and we anticipate these kinds of outcome metrics to go up, not down, as a result of the work we’re doing.”

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, x.com/KellyLyell and  facebook.com/KellyLyell.news. 

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: What we know about PSD proposal to change graduation requirements