Over 30,000 Mississippians get stories like this delivered to their inboxes for free.
Sign up for The Today, our daily newsletter, and continue to read this story.
The State Board of Education on Thursday approved a new set of graduation options beginning with 9th graders in the 2018-2019 school year.
When those students graduate as high school seniors it will be with a new traditional diploma with new course requirements.
The Mississippi Department of Education also will offer diploma endorsements in academic, distinguished academic and career and technical categories.
Students with significant cognitive disabilities who are unable to earn a traditional diploma will have the option of an alternate diploma, officials said.
The board did not vote on a certificate of attendance option. Jean Massey, the MDE executive director of secondary education, said more work must be done on determining what that will look like before bringing it before the board.
The state currently has five diploma options for students. Those include career pathway, district option, early exit exam, traditional pathway and the Mississippi Occupation Diploma option, only available for students with special needs.
“The majority of our kids in special ed can earn a traditional diploma,” State Superintendent of Education Carey Wright said. “Students with significant cognitive disabilities, that’s another population. All these other special ed kids, with the right instruction starting in elementary school — these children can earn a traditional diploma.”
A Senate bill passed during the 2017 legislative session did away with both the career pathway and occupational diploma options, beginning in the upcoming school year.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.