Advocates push state to accommodate students aging out of school
06.15.2020 | POLITICO | “The young people aging out of school in two weeks are the same student populations who have been hardest hit by the pandemic itself and by the challenges of online learning,” said Ashley Grant, a supervising staff attorney for AFC and coordinator of the statewide Coalition for Multiple Pathways to a Diploma. “COVID has already devastated Black and Latinx communities. It shouldn’t take away students’ chance to earn a high school diploma too.”
About 74 percent of students aging out are Black or Latino even as those students make up less than 45 percent of the total high school population in the state, and 47 percent have disabilities, according to the brief. And one in three students aging out is learning English as a new language.
