L’Observateur / June 27, 2000

LAPLACE – If the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education passes a controversial motion on provisional high school diplomas, high school seniors who have not passed the Louisiana Graduate Exit Exam will still be able to get a diploma.

Right now, all high school seniors in Louisiana have to pass the GEE in order to get a high school diploma. However BESE is discussing the ideathat if a student passes the eighth-grade LEAP test and has all the required 23 high school credits they can still get a “provisional” diploma even if they fail to pass the GEE.

It is not known if the provisional diploma would carry the same weight as a standard high school diploma or if it would help or hinder a graduating senior from getting a job or getting into college.

In St. John Parish, the idea of these provisional diplomas is not verypopular with educators.

East St. John Principal Debra Schum has a lot of negative things to sayabout the provisional diploma. She said if a student sees that he/shedoesn’t really have to pass the exit exam to graduate, then there is no real motivation to excel.

“Students are not old enough and wise enough to know the difference between a provisional and a standard diploma,” said Schum. “All they seeis they will get a diploma. Most kids don’t care about the difference.”St. John Parish School Superintendent Chris Donaldson is very blunt in histhoughts about provisional diplomas.

“I think it is ludicrous,” said Donaldson. “It is dumbing down the highschool diploma.”Donaldson, who has spent the last year trying to raise the standards and accountability in St. John Parish, thinks the whole concept is a 180-degree turn from what the state is trying to achieve.

“This goes against everything the state has been preaching about accountability,” said Donaldson.

Schum agreed. “We can’t motivate students to raise the standards if wehave the provisional diploma.”Schum said she has statistical proof that LEAP and GEE are great motivators for students to do better.

“At the beginning of this school year I had 125 seniors who did not pass LEAP,” said Schum. “When these kids were informed that they would notgraduate if they did not pass the GEE, their attitudes changed. I ended upwith only eight students who did not graduate.”Rachel J. Allemand, executive director of curriculum, instruction andassessment for St. Charles Parish schools, attended the BESE meeting atwhich the proposal was introduced. She said she doesn’t see where theconcept would do any good.

When she returned and told colleagues about it, “People were surprised at the message it sends students,” she said.

The effect would be that many borderline students would simply give up trying to excel. “Many are just looking for the quickest route out of highschool,” she said.

The proposal struck her as rather pointless.

“If you can pass the eighth-grade LEAP test, there’s no reason you can’t pass the Graduate Exit Exam,” she said.

(Reporters Leonard Gray and Erik Sanzenbach contributed to this story)

Return To News Stories