California’s Alternate Pathway to a Diploma for Students with Extensive Support Needs

California's new alternative pathway to a diploma gives more students with disabilities the opportunity to earn a diploma, but who qualifies and how? During our live event, we hosted Kristin Wright and Stephanie Coleman, experts from Inclusive Practices and Integrated Systems at the Sacramento County Office of Education, to hear them debunk myths, answer questions, and provide advice to empower parents in advocating for their children’s futures.

Watch the full replay in the video above, or check out our recap of the highlights with FAQs from the chat during the event.

Here's the link to the "home base" document Wright and Coleman mention.

Hey, everybody, welcome to Undivided Live. I'm Lindsay Crain, and I head the Content and Community teams at Undivided, and for my visual description, I'm a female with brown chin length hair, glasses, wearing a tan blazer over a white shirt, sitting in a green office with bookcases to my right. Undivided is a digital platform and service that supports families raising kids with disabilities. We simplify complex systems so families can access the care they need, and that includes the educational system, which is why we're talking about a very exciting development for our kids today: How students with extensive support needs can now earn a diploma in California.

To guide us today, we are thrilled to welcome Kristin Wright and Stephanie Coleman. Kristin is the Executive Director of Inclusive Practices at the Sacramento County Office of Education. She previously served as the California State Director of Special Education at the CDE. Prior, she served as the Education Policy Advisor for Special Education, Homeless, and Foster Youth at the California State Board of Education and Education Programs Consultant to the Advisory Commission on Special Education at the CDE. Kristin is also mother to a young adult with intellectual disabilities, which has guided her passion for this work.

Stephanie is the Coordinator of Inclusive Practices and Integrated Systems at the Sacramento County Office of Education, where she advocates for instructional strategies and evidence based practices that promote inclusivity, belonging, and academic success for all students. She brings over 17 years of experience as an education specialist and serves as a part time instructor at Cal State Sacramento. Welcome, Kristin and Stephanie.

Thank you so much for being here today. Kristin and Stephanie will be breaking down the most important information we need to know about the new pathway. As districts are adjusting to the new law, there are still plenty of questions and we'll address as many as we can today. We're also seeing districts roll out the pathway in various ways. For example, some are saying an alternate curriculum is required.

Others are saying students on the pathway have to be in a separate special education classroom to get their credits. And others are continuing to build inclusive practices and modifying work in general ed. We'll talk about which or all of these approaches are correct, in addition to eligibility, graduation requirements, implications for transition programs, higher education, public benefits, and more.

We also want to give a huge thanks and shout out to our incredible partner organizations for this event: Ability Path, Autism Society of the San Francisco Bay Area, Base Camp Advocacy, California Down Syndrome Advocacy Coalition, or CDAC, Children's Health Council, Napa Center, Palo Alto Special Education PTA, the West Side Family Resource and Empowerment Center, and of course, the Sacramento County Office of Education for spreading the word far and wide about the pathway. Thanks to all of you for ensuring your communities have the chance to hear from Kristin and Stephanie today. Kylie from our Community team will be sharing website information for all of these amazing organizations in the chat. Please check them out. They support families across California in vital and diverse ways, from providing direct services to educating, empowering, and always putting individuals and families front and center. We're grateful for your partnership and leadership.

And with that, Kristin and Stephanie, we're so grateful you're here. Take it away as well. Said. We are here to talk about the alternative pathway to a high school diploma, and we are pleased to be able to be here. My name is Stephanie Coleman. I am a white cis female with curly blondish hair, wearing a striped sweater, and my background is a Zoom background, which is blue, with a tree over my right shoulder. Kristin, did you want to introduce yourself? Good afternoon and thanks so much for having us. And Lindsay, thanks so much for all the work that you and your colleagues at Undivided and all your partners have been doing, especially to get the word out around this.

We're really excited to bring this opportunity to more folks and empower more parents to be able to bring this back to their districts and schools. So, we'd love to... Actually, you guys are not having the chat feature, so I'm going to go ahead and skip this, but I want you to think to yourself, how are you doing? Do a check in briefly with yourself. If you are a part of a campfire, what part of that would you be feeling today? Are you feeling more like the rocks that surround it, the wood that's in there preparing to light a fire, the match? Are you feeling like the fire? What part matches your feelings today as you enter into this space with us? Everybody plays a role, just like in a fire, in a campfire. Everybody has a particular role to play, and so we hope that you are coming to us prepared to kind of engage in this discussion and learn a little bit more.

Another resource that you're going to be provided by, or provided with after this presentation today, is what we call a home based document, and you'll see just a screen snip of what that document looks like on your screen. This includes links to everything we're going to talk about today, and so we want you to feel comfortable with having all of the resources that we talk about, don't need to worry about that, like trying to write everything down. Just trust that you'll get those as an email following this presentation and this document, while it is an electronic document that you will see, is a living document as well, and so as we get new resources, they get updated. I actually added two new resources to it today, so the screen snip is actually inaccurate to what it actually looks like today.

So, please know that you're going to have access to all of this as we finish up how we're doing. So again, Kristin, we don't have a chat going, so we don't exactly know who's in the room, but we are going to make a presumption that this is families, community members, organizations that are looking to help support students with disabilities and people who just want to learn more, so hopefully that covered everybody that's here, and we're excited to have you here today and be able to share a little bit about the alt pathway with you. Kristin, I'm going to kick it to you. All right. So we, like hopefully most of you, I know probably it's fair to say most of you, want to imagine a world where we've created a sense of belonging for everyone, and we know in order to do that, we have to create systems and laws and structures and mindsets that ensure that we do that, and so today we'll be talking about the alternative pathway, but from a larger perspective, our vision is that we live in a system that doesn't have barriers, especially barriers that we put in place for ourselves, and so this hopefully today is a good example of opening up that everyone in California can get a high school diploma. There's not, ‘But not these kids,’ anymore.

So, heading towards that idea of belonging both theoretically and physically, as much as that's possible to. Next slide. So, we all know that presuming competence does supercharge self-determination, and as we're looking, I have a daughter who's 27 who is expressing exactly what she wants and needs, and we're trying to make sure that we're honoring that. Part of that is, as you know, giving all the tools possible to our students, even the ones with the most extensive support needs, who often are left sort of out of a lot of systems, to be able to, again, have whatever they need in order to get to the next place after high school.

Next slide. So, one of the things that we are trying to do, as our... one of our norms is to center the voices of individuals with disabilities. Ideally, we would have someone with a disability speaking with us here today, but instead we're going to at least feature William Assimakopoulos, who’s a high school student, and shout out to Reach Every Voice who has fabulous social media, because we use them all the time. And he says, “I used to spend every day in a self-contained autism classroom, and it slowly became torture. The adults who worked with me were so kind, but I was treated like a toddler no matter how many years passed. Finally, getting access to age appropriate education saved my life.” And I think that's sort of the point of today, and a lot of times, I think many of us have heard, “Oh, well, they're on a certificate track, so it doesn't really matter whether they're getting access to their high school courses or their grade level standards.”

The reality is, everyone has a legal right to have access to their grade level standards, and I know as a parent, in my early days when my daughter was upset a lot, especially with being over sensory at school, I thought, I just want her to be happy, and I really... I had another parent say to me, “Happiness is great, but that's not going to serve her after she's done with school,” and so it really got me thinking about how can I make sure that... Maybe her happiness had to do with the fact that she wasn't getting challenged in what she needed, and so stopping the the idea of mapping to just happiness and to these presumed competence greater outcomes.

So, next slide. So, one of the things... We're not here to preach to you today, but we want you to understand how we are talking about this and what we've learned from doing many of these presentations and from working with a lot of the districts and schools across the state, and one of them is the impact of the language that's being used to talk about the student group that we're really talking about today, which is our students with the most extensive support needs, or under the federal law, students with significant cognitive disabilities, and so as we go to the next slide, some of these words, especially ableism, have really come into play a lot, and what we're finding is that ableism and this idea that people with disabilities aren't able to do what students without disabilities are, which we know is not true, and systemic practices and processes that are really disadvantaging people with disabilities, like barriers like we’ve had previously, which did not allow students to get a diploma, those things are pervasive in our system, and we're really trying to work on how can we shift our language around that, so we're going to go to the next slide, and some of these things might look... some of these words might be familiar to you, and I'll say personally and I know Steph feels the same way. We've both used these words at different times in our careers, and what we've realized is that they... these words do have a way of perpetuating ableism and othering our students that we're talking about today.

So, this is how we've historically referred to students. Special education student, sped student, sped kiddo, special needs student, mod/severe student, level three, or SDC student. And I think one of the things we have to ask ourselves is why are we calling students these things. These are our students, and by doing so, we have given others permission to other and expect something different. So we hope that today you'll just consider, maybe --Go to the next slide, Steph.-- thinking about how we might say things differently. And so removing special education as an adjective in front of all those words, student, learner, really can shift how students feel about themselves and also how others perceive them. So instead of saying sped student, we would just call them a student, a learner, or a scholar. Or if I'm talking about my own daughter, and I know I have been guilty of this in the past, saying, “Well, you know, my special needs daughter...,” or, “My daughter with disabilities...,” and then I had to start asking myself, why am I... In what context do I need to say that? And maybe I do need to say that when I'm talking to another parent of a child with a disability to know that we have commonality, but otherwise she's one of my children. She's my middle daughter, my... or she's a student or learner, or a student with disabilities.

Now, this does not take away from a person's right to have identity first language, so I just want to make that clear. I know this is person first language we're talking about here, and so if a person would like to identify themselves by their disability, please know that we are not suggesting that that is not appropriate, but what we're talking about is when we're talking at school and about our students and our kids in the context of school, we really want to make sure to not unintentionally other them and other the teachers that work with them. Next slide. So we're wondering if there might be a word that you use that you might consider shifting.

And you saw those words: sped student sped kiddo. In a recent meeting, I was with a family who said they have a level three kid. Those kinds of terms then give people this mental picture that may not initially presume competence. So just a... words of... Just things to think about. Next slide. So really, what are we about today? We are here, and you are probably here not to get lectured by us, but to really help realize diploma equity for students with disabilities. This is my daughter, Shelby. She's 27 now. She graduated from a fully inclusive high school with her peers. She left there at 22, but Shelby did not leave with a diploma.

Now, had Shelby graduated now with her same peers in the same courses she was taking, Shelby would have a diploma, because at that time, there was not an option for a student who had modified curriculum to be able to receive a diploma. That is not true anymore, and that's kind of what we're here to talk to you about today. Next slide. So really we're about eliminating these system barriers and the information gaps, which is why we want you today to leave here armed with all the information. Stephanie talked to you about the homebase document that has everything that you'll need to take with you, so make sure that you have saved that. Next slide. So this pathway... So we've been calling it, and it's called in law, the California Alternative Pathway to a High School Diploma.

We are evolving from that because truly this is a pathway to a high school diploma for a specific student group. There are other student groups that Stephanie will talk about later that also have alternative pathways that they can use to receive a diploma. I think the point is that now every single student can receive a diploma. Next slide. Where did this come from? This came from the U.S. Department of Education, and this came from this idea that all students need to have access to grade level content, and it may be restricted in scope and complexity, which is exactly what we're talking about for our students with significant cognitive disabilities, but... or it may be introductory or prerequisite skills, but if it's aligned to the grade level standards in California, it meets the mark. And so we'll talk a little bit about what that means later, but this didn't come just from California.

This is something that's happening nationally. We modeled some of our work around the alt pathway after Louisiana's model, and they've been offering diplomas. Many other states have been offering diplomas for this same student group. Next slide. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, these are the provisions that the U.S. Department of Education told states, “If you're going to do this, this is what you have to meet. It has to be standards based and aligned with the state requirements for the regular high school diploma. That means our state requirements for a high school diploma, right? Not A to G, but what our state requirements, and we'll show you those a little bit later. And it has to be obtained within the same period that students would qualify under IDEA, which we all know is up until they turn 22.

Okay? So that means students have until they're 22 to be able to earn this high school diploma and also do whatever other transition related things that they want to do. Next slide. So California decided after having a work group, and this language in the budget came a few years ago and it started with this section 51225.31. And basically it said students with exceptional needs who entered the ninth grade were in high school in the 22-23 school year or later, and attended a school, a public school, could graduate from high school from this pathway by meeting the criteria below. And this is that they've been determined to be eligible to take the alt assessment. Now this is really important, okay? They have been determined to be eligible, so we've had a lot of questions. Do students need to take the alternate assessment to qualify to get a diploma?

They do not have to take the assessment, although the state recommends that everyone is accountable in the accountability system and takes our assessments, but it's not a deal breaker if, for some reason, they didn't take it or they were opted out of the assessment. But that's really the group of students that we're talking about today. It's the students with significant cognitive disabilities, often referred to as extensive support needs, who are eligible to take the alt assessment and the student’s required to complete state standards- aligned coursework to meet graduation requirements, which means that these state requirements we're going to talk about in a minute have to be met using alternate achievement standards that we'll talk about in a minute.

Before I move forward, I just want to say that this 51225.31 that was first enacted, it was found that that kept out some eligible students who might be able to still get a diploma at that time. So the state added .32, which took away --and you'll see it crossed off on here-- ‘entered the ninth grade.’ So now the law says students with exceptional needs who were in high school in the 22-23 school year or later are eligible. Okay? So that's the group we're talking about. Next slide. And so I think we're going to kick it over to Stephanie, and she's going to give you a little bit more information that you can have in your hands to take with you. Go ahead, Steph. All right. So Kristin, I'm going to tell you there's some questions in the chat I’m going to let you take a look at to see if we can get those in or not, from the chat, from the Q&A.

These are your first look at some of our resources. These are one pagers --They're actually double sided, so they’re a two pager-- that is meant to be helpful in moving forward. You're going to hear a lot of information today that may feel like it's too much to take in all at once, and that's okay, and that's what this particular document helps give you a general overview. I know that Undivided has also created some great documents, and those were shared as well. This is helpful for families, but also know that we created one that mirrors this, but it's specifically for districts. And so if you are a parent or community organization that seems to be struggling a little with districts understanding things, you're welcome to share this with them. And you can share the slide deck with them as well if you'd like.

These are just quick guides to understanding what are the requirements, who is eligible, all the things we're going to talk about today. In addition to this, in partnership with High Quality IEPs, we created a guide to help parents and families and schools and everyone understand what are the graduation requirements that students with disabilities can utilize, have access to in order to earn a diploma in California. And so this guide goes over both this particular pathway, but also other pathways that students can take to earn a high school diploma in California. So in addition to these being linked in the slides, they're also available on that homebase document, so feel like you just have a one stop shop to get these particular resources.

If you happen to be here and you are someone who works at a school, works at a district, and is interested in more information, we do have a community of practice for our school districts and leadership to be able to attend and ask questions and work together. We're transparent and so families can take a look at the documents that we share there and the things that we talk about, but this particular Padlet is more specific to things around board policy, things that are very district specific but could be good for families to understand as well, if you're interested. So you do also have access to that on the homebase document. Oh, I apologize, I clicked on it by mistake. Okay. In addition to that... Let me get this back into full screen, and see if I can go to the next page without doing that.

Here's how we're going to explain this particular pathway. So it's important to note this is not an alternative diploma in California, so if you have heard somebody say, “Oh, this is the alt diploma,” it is not in fact an alt diploma in California. In California, this is an alternative pathway in order to earn a high school diploma. And you're probably wondering what's the nuance there, what does that mean, what's the difference. Well, we think it's a big difference. It is a diploma like every other student in California can earn, which is a very different delineation. And when we think about alternative pathways, we think about student groups like these that you see at the bottom here: students who are maybe foster youth. or are part of a military family, or have experienced homelessness. These are student groups that really have some extenuating circumstances that we need to take into account in an equitable approach to ensure that they have access to a diploma.

And all of these student groups have alternative pathways that exempt them from the added on requirements that some district... that all districts have. Districts have the ability to take the state requirements, this column here, and they can add to them and sometimes you see things like the A-G requirements or college and career readiness, and they'll add additional requirements that students need to take. Students that are on alternative pathways have the ability to only need to take the courses that are state required courses, and so I'm going to go through these now so I don't go through them again in a few minutes, but you'll see that with this pathway we actually have another column, and that column is for this particular pathway, but it mirrors the state requirements, which are three years of English, two years of mathematics, and algebra or integrated math is included in that requirement.

It depends on if your district has moved to integrated math versus algebra. Two years of science. One of those years is a physical science, and the other is a life science, like biology. Three years of social science, which include world history, U.S history, and government and econ. Those are those one semester each classes. And then one course in either a visual and performing art, a world language, or a career technical education course, sometimes we say CTE course, and then finally two years of PE. So that makes up 13 different courses that a student needs to take. Now, we do have a couple of courses that are currently due to be starting in the next few years, including ethnic studies potentially, and a personal business finance course. Those are not yet officially state required courses, and so until that point, they do not go on this list. Once they become a state required course for a diploma, they would be included in the courses required for all students.

So before I overwhelm you with the next slide, I want to give you a little bit of a warning. The next slide... The next three slides are actually pretty busy slides, and that is because they're meant to be a resource for you to take with you if you need to ask questions at IEPs and you're like, “I'm not really exactly sure what should we be talking about?” That's what these are. So please refer to them in your mind as, oh, this is a resource to come back to, not to be overwhelmed in that very busy slide. So IEP teams need to consider some really important things when we're talking about this pathway. They need to be thinking about where can the student have access to grade level content. Oh, I didn't mean to skip ahead. Sorry. Let me go back, see if I can go back. There we go.

Do they have access to general education standards no matter where they're at? Those grade level content standards. Is universal design happening in classrooms? Are we building with the intention of universally designing for all students? And then only after that has been done, specifically planning intentionally for students that have maybe more extensive support needs where we need to have very specific strategies in place. Did we consider general education before we jumped into where have they been in the past and carrying that over? Are we really considering in what ways could we provide what a student needs in general education before we consider putting them in a separate setting? And then do all the families even know that their child could potentially have eligibility for this pathway to a diploma or a diploma in general? Has that even been a conversation that's occurring?

So those are some of the important IEP questions. The next questions to consider... As a family member or an advocate or whatever your role is, we're all responsible for making sure that people know about this, and so we like to say, “Tag, you’re it.” You came to this training, which we love and we're so happy to have you here, and now we hope that you will help us continue to get this message out, and so let's all be talking about it. It's important that we talk about this to help families understand that students have this potential option of a diploma pathway. We need to be a broken record about how important communication is. That should be such a high priority. How can we know a student hasn't learned if they don't have meaningful access to communication? And so a really heavy focus on communication needs to be a part of every student's IEP conversation.

Let's talk about this early and often. It’s really hard to imagine as an eighth grade family going into high school when no one has ever talked about a diploma, to have that mindset shift right away, it's really challenging to think about how... What do you mean? We've been planning for something else for all this time, and now you're telling me there's a diploma? What? That's a really shocking and jarring conversation that we know a lot of families are having. So wouldn't it be better if we started having these conversations early on and planning meaningfully for inclusive environments where standards-aligned curriculum is happening every day as early as preschool, and helping every family see that it is absolutely not just possible, but will happen for every child who can be on the pathway and making plans and steps all the way along the path to get to the diploma.

And we need to think about what needs to happen for student success in every aspect of the school community, and how does that lead to having us be able to access a diploma. And then, every agency that we have, DOR, DDS, the CDE, everybody plays a role in ensuring that students have what they need to have a full, expansive, educational experience and life experience after they graduate. And so we need to understand those responsibilities. And as employees that work for school districts and for schools, it's important that they understand that, so when we're having those continued services conversations in transition that that's happening in a meaningful way.

So when you get a little bit into the details here about what this looks like and what it means, I told you I was going to come back to this little table. You can see here we have the alternative pathway coursework, and it looks exactly the same as the state coursework, because that's what it is. So students who are eligible to take the California alt assessment, as Kristin said, are eligible for this pathway, and it means that they need to have meaningful access to standards aligned curriculum in all of these areas. And that can come in a lot of different ways. It doesn't mean that it's one... it's a one method. That would not be individualized and that wouldn't be true to what we know about IEPs, but what it means is they need to have access to grade level content. And in some cases that hasn't happened in the past. But what we also want you to know is this is... and I'm going to say this very clearly and kind of slowly because I want to make sure it really sticks.

This is the only pathway in California that you can earn a high school diploma and continue to receive your offer of FAPE until you turn 22. So students who are eligible for this particular pathway, those students who are eligible for the CAA, or that alt assessment, they can earn their high school diploma and continue to stay and work on those transition skills that often happen between 18 and 22. They can continue with the district to receive those supports and services, and they can also be still working on some of their diploma requirements, but if they earn a diploma, it does not exempt them or does not kind of end their services like it does in other pathways that students earn a diploma. So in other avenues, if a student earns a high school diploma, as we know, that's the end of services for that student. That is not true for the student group, and so they can continue on and receive those services, and they do not have to meet all of the extra requirements that districts offer.

So sometimes, in most districts, it would be four years of English instead of three years of English. They may have additional health requirements. They may have additional... lots of different requirements that districts usually have, up to 220 to 240 credits that a student would need to earn. On this pathway, we're looking at more like 130. So it's definitely a different requirement amount. But like Kristin, I always like to point out that doesn't preclude students from being able to take those courses if they would like to continue to take more of those courses. This does not exempt them from being able to. It just means that they don't need to meet the requirements above and beyond the state requirements. So what happened to the certificate of completion? We get this question a lot. Nothing. Nothing has happened to the Certificate of Completion. It still in California exists, but what we will say is why would we map to that?

Why would we map to something that does not align with our intentions and our hopes for our students in California? We now have the ability to say that every student has access to a diploma pathway. That's a really bold statement to be able to say, and we want every student mapped to a diploma, which means we want them to be able to experience what are the things that we learn that we call standards. What are those things, and do we really believe that standard if we're not giving access to every student? So in what ways do we map to that rather than mapping to a Certificate of Completion that does not have any overwhelming or overarching requirements. So it exists, and if for some reason a student is unable to meet the requirements for the high school diploma by the time they're aging out at 22, then yes, we would always want to honor the work that that student has done with the Certificate of Completion.

We just shouldn't be mapping towards that. Excuse me. So here's a little bit of nuts and bolts. If you're thinking to yourself, what does this mean, and what should I be talking about, and what should we be thinking about in our IEPs, I'm seeing a few questions around curriculum and what that looks like. Well, let me take a minute to explain some things. You've heard us say a couple of times, standards aligned courses, and in California we didn't adopt alternative standards, but there have been a lot... there's been a lot of states who have, and the state of California, the CDE, has recommended that schools look towards some of these different groups that have created these alternative achievement and standards and aligned to them. Now, that means that they are aligned to the Common Core standards, so we know that they are standards aligned.

So it may not be the full breadth of what the standards were in their entirety, but it definitely is tied directly to grade level standards, which means that students are actually having access to these big, beautiful ideas that their peers are having access to. They may not have the depth of understanding or being able to talk about them, but it doesn't mean that they aren't getting access to that, which is a really important nuance to think about. This has been a little challenging. I will admit that. We do a lot of work with districts trying to help them understand that and so have some other organizations, and so in partnership with the California Department of Education and WestEd, there has been some work done to help schools and districts understand how do we help make sure that students have different ways to be able to show what they know instead of a standardized test or essay.

And so this particular website, which again, has another resource that has been linked, is just that. It's some really good examples and direction around how do we provide a more robust way for students to be able to show what they know, and for teachers to be able to really assess what is it that we're asking students to know. If it's a standard aligned standard, right, if we're using the alt achievement standards to look at what are students needing to know, it's very clear and it's very easy for someone to be able to assess that in multiple ways because they understand exactly what the skills are that need to be assessed. Okay, here we see a course... Sorry... a course of study. In California, every student in high school is supposed to have a course of study that is done every single year. They meet with their counselor and they go over what are the courses that we need, and how are we going to map to those throughout the years that we're in high school.

It starts before they even enter high school, and so it would be a discussion around, well, what classes am I going to take to meet these requirements as we go along the way? And what you see here is an expanded version of that, because we know that our students have up till 22 to meet these requirements, so we've kind of extended it out so you can see all of the extra space that could be available for students to be able to meet these requirements. Now, we don't want to stretch things out if we don't have to, and I told you, 13 classes. 13 classes over four years is not that many classes. Most class... or most schools have the option of between six and eight periods during the school day, which means in two years, two to three years, they could actually meet all of those requirements.

Now that would be a heavy lift, but it could happen. So there's plenty of space if you look here for students to be able to meet these requirements within four years and still have all the additional coursework that we know that they also need to be a full student with all of their needs being met. On this particular example, this is just an example to see how and what it could look like, anything that is white are these high school requirements that I put over here on the left hand side. All of those things can still happen within the prescribed amount of time. So with that, you can see you still have four years for even more. And if we need to stretch some of these out, we can absolutely adjust and shift. One thing I'm going to say is this is just an example. And there are three examples in this slide deck. Some of them are hidden, and we're not going to go over all of them, but you can also see here what are the ways that a student might receive instruction. What might that look like? Well, it could look like some co-taught classes where an ed specialist and a general education teacher are coming together to teach a course.

It could be an SAI. In California, we say ‘specialized academic instruction course.’ That's often a course taught in a separate setting by an ed specialist, and it could look like that. It could look like general education with modifications. It could look like any number of things. In order for the student to receive access, they need access to standards aligned curriculum. And I did see a question regarding grading, and we don't have a slide for that, so I'm going to address it now. There is not a specific requirement that the state has given to districts around what... in what ways grading needs to be done. And so it is the local... ability for local education agencies to determine whether they want to do modified grading, if they want to do pass/fail or credit/no credit. That is really a local decision to be made, and there's some guidance that they can look into that is also in that Padlet, but districts have the ability, districts and schools have the ability to make that local control choice on their own. Each of these sticky notes... I told you there were three examples. Each of them has just a short little description sticky note that’s kind of laid over the top to explain what was some of the thinking about each of these courses for people that want a little bit more information.

All right. Finally, the algebra requirement. I think this is a finally for me before I hand it back to Kristin. The algebra requirement is still there. There continues to be a waiver that the state of California has had in place for the algebra requirement for a very long time, and so we still want students to have access to standard of applying curriculum in algebra, just like anything else, but there is a waiver process if needed, and districts have been aware of that waiver process, so it shouldn't be new to them if they need to utilize that, but our hope is that they actually will be able to do it within the same ways that they're ensuring access in all of the other content areas. This is just a really quick overview of what should go on the transcripts versus what should go on the diploma, based on what education law already dictates. The pathway to an IEP is noted in the IEP documents. It's not going to show up on a transcript.

That's not a... There's not a denotation on transcripts around that, but it's something that will be discussed and noted in the IEP itself. Okay, that was a lot, so I'm going to give you just a hot second while I hand it over to Kristin to think, what are surfacing for you, what are you thinking about? I'm seeing lots of questions being dropped into the chat, and I appreciate Kristin answering as many as she can, but what are you thinking about? What's kind of still sitting with you? Feel free to put your questions in the chat, or if you just want to wait, we are going to answer the ones that are there if you've seen them. So Kristin, I'm going to hand it over to you to do some myth busting. Okay, so a few things. There are some... definitely some things that we hear really often. One of them is that students with extensive support needs don't really need a high school diploma to get a job.

A Certificate of Completion is just fine. And actually, we had someone in the chat say you do need to have a diploma in order to get some jobs. And so, that is not true. 90% of employers... Meaning what's not true is that you don't need a diploma. 90% of employers prefer to hire a youth with a diploma, and many jobs do require a diploma, and I think the bigger question is, why would we put in barriers that are unnecessary. Why wouldn't we want everyone to be able to have access to high quality learning in their grade level standards and get a diploma so that anything is possible? Another myth is that students with extensive support needs don't need a diploma because they'll only be able to find work as volunteers and in supported employment, and those don't require a diploma. Again, why would we limit something for no reason? What we want is to give students every possibility of getting that employment, should that be something that they choose, and should that diploma be a barrier? No. Definitely not.

So, students with extensive support needs... Everyone has a right to work. We are a right to work state and we utilize supported employment, and our students have a right to that. Our people with disabilities have a right to that, and that high school diploma can provide opportunities to access that employment. So again, no barriers, right, Steph? Next slide. So Kristin, on this one, do you have some things that you have heard from the field --I know we both have-- that you just want to cover or address, especially around where can a student access this and what kind of curriculum do they have to do in order to access this? Will you address some of those? Yeah. So I think Lindsay mentioned them right at the very beginning and the ones we're hearing the most lately, which are definitely not true, are that students, first of all, need to, if they want to access a diploma pathway, they have to go away into a separate classroom to do that.

I think the whole idea of offering a pathway for students with extensive support needs or significant cognitive disabilities, that... We want them to have access to high quality learning in the standards, in the content areas that our teachers are trained to have content areas in, right? So, there is not a requirement that you have to be going to a separate place by any means. Okay? And so, the second one that we hear often is that you have to be on alternate curriculum, and that is also not true. Again, this idea of inclusion, and inclusive practices, and research based best practices, is that you have access to high quality learning with peers, with and without disabilities, and that your learning gets scaffolded based on your level.

So you would have the opportunity, like, let's say, to be in a science class and learn 11th grade science content to whatever level you can access the content at. So we're still looking at 11th grade standards, and you don't have to do that by getting a separate curriculum. Now, can you, if you're... if you have a child who is in a separate classroom, can they learn using alternate curriculum? Of course they can, but I think the question is how can we use this to make sure that our students, our most extensive... students with the most extensive support needs really get access to what they need. Are we... Can you think of any other ones, Stephanie, that we're hearing more often? No, I think... Well, I think the big one that we have heard recently is really around students that have been fully included being moved into separate settings, because that's where alternative curriculum is being offered. And I just answered a question, actually, in the Q&A around where can this happen.

It can happen anywhere. We actually... We are pretty strong inclusionists. We won't even pretend to be sorry about that, but where does standards get taught as it is? It gets taught in general education, and so if a student has already been in general education and fully included, they have had access to standards aligned curriculum by nature of where they have been receiving instruction. We just need to make sure that that alignment is also meeting the requirements, so we're not in... I'm going to pretend --I know this wouldn't actually happen-- that they're in all elective classes, fully included all day long in electives. No, they would need to still be in these courses that will meet the state requirements, but being in an inclusive setting in and of itself is providing access to standards aligned curriculum, so that works great, and a variation and a blend of things is also appropriate.

If a student needs instruction because of their IEP, it's been determined that they would best receive mathematics instruction in a separate setting, okay, but that doesn't preclude them from needing to only receive instruction in a separate setting across all content areas. Maybe a blend of some general education courses and some courses in a separate setting is appropriate, as well. So this does not mean districts need to say, “We adopt this curriculum that’s standards aligned and anyone on the pathway has to take that.” That actually does not... It's not at all the intent of this. It's actually to increase students’ access to their peers more frequently, to receive access to the curriculum that their peers are receiving on a regular basis. So we want to see more inclusive practices, not what... not pulling back from those inclusive practices.

So what are we really mapping to here? We're really mapping to college, employment and community belonging. And I don't know if any of you have heard recently about sort of California's expansion of inclusive college opportunities for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities, but as we're thinking about what potential opportunities might be available, I think one of the things that we've seen, especially with our students going on into college programs, is that many of them have not had access to academic work and content and reading, and so as we're thinking about this opportunity, even from students that are much younger than high school, we're looking ahead to say, “Let's give as much access and opportunity to academics and to... and engaging with grade level standards as possible to not limit anything.”

And I have a daughter who communicates using a communication device, and that's taken a really long time to get in place, but what we know is that the more language that she receives, obviously the less frustration she's having, and the more we're able to see that she's able to do a higher form of academic content. So we just want to make sure we're not limiting anyone, and that we're really mapping to college and employment. Doesn't mean everyone has to go to college, and everyone has to get a full time job, 40 hours a week. No, not necessarily, just like anyone else who is in school, but we're really mapping to that idea of community belonging as well, and so, just again, all those opportunities that we can provide. Next slide. And so as we're thinking about this idea of self-determination and great possibility, what we want to do today is end on a note of positivity and hope around what is possible for our student population that has not had these possibilities in many cases until now.

So we hope that you'll leave this presentation inspired and know that we're here to support you, and there's a large contingency of people who've been working on this now across the state, and so make sure to stay connected. And I know Undivided continues to stay connected with us, so we're happy to help, and thanks for all the great questions. Kicking it over to the video, Steph. So as you saw, there is definitely possibilities around inclusive college. Six of our universities in California just got awarded huge federal grants to create inclusive college opportunities at their colleges, including Stanford and many of our CSUs and UCs. We, Stephanie and I, are part of a new center that SCOE was awarded alongside Los Angeles County Office of Education called the California Center for Inclusive College. And so, part of the work that we're doing and that we're tasked to do under this statute is to help districts and schools and parents and families and others understand what it takes in order to prepare students to be ready to come to college, and so this alt pathway plays a huge role in that.

This gives us a mechanism and it gives you as parents a mechanism to go in and say, “I understand that everyone has a right to get a high school diploma.” Not, “Can my student get a diploma?” but, “How is my student going to get a diploma, and how are they going to get access to their grade level standards?” And this has been a new and hard conversation for many, many districts and schools, and so many are doing incredible work around this, but it's a huge mind shift, as you know, to move into from maybe not having access, especially in high school, to grade level standards, to suddenly figuring out how courses can be adapted to work for all students. So, we hope this has been helpful. You want to go to the next slide, Stephanie? And if we're thinking about students with intellectual disabilities being in courses, UC Davis just graduated their first four year cohort of scholars, and they started their first year in one class at the university, and now they're taking classes across all colleges within the university departments.

Here's some examples here. But just to give you an idea, because many of these students didn't have access to any of these types of courses when they were in high school, and are doing very well and very interested, and so it's sort of the dawning of a new day. It's time to think about what is possible, and, again, we're here to support you. We are not lawyers, so we're not going to comment on individual cases, but we definitely have an idea of what's happening out in the state right now. Now, my hindsight, definitely 20/20, probably like many of yours who have the students who are getting older. I saw a few of you in the chat. I should have had higher expectations academically. I think it would have given my daughter a lot more opportunities now, but I think I limited those unintentionally. I should have been in more pursuit of functional communication. Had we done that sooner, she would have access to her academics sooner, and I think things would have been different. We're doing a lot of make up for that now. And I really underestimated the power of inclusivity and belonging and learning alongside peers. She does her best when she's with lots of people and not just in really small environments that are overly predictable all the time. Next slide.

So we've had lots of questions. Thank you for all of those. We we will continue to answer them, and so if you want to stay on and we haven't answered yours yet, we're working through them right now. Stephanie, is there anything else you want to say? If we don't get your question answered, we do have our email addresses, and we will do our best to respond back. Again, just like Kristin said, we don't give legal advice, but if there are questions that we can answer, we do try our best to ensure that the right information is getting out. We appreciate your time and your thoughtful questions and hope to hear from some of you in the future. I know I've seen many of you at presentations in the past, so thank you for coming back and listening again, and hopefully something resonated differently today if you've seen us before, or continues to support the things that you need. With that, Lindsay, we'll turn it back over to you. Thank you so much.

There's... I've also seen this presentation. I learned something new every time I see it. I've seen it several times. So, thank you, both. As someone who has a daughter who is on the alt pathway, I'm so grateful for all the work that you're doing around this. I do want to ask, I know you're going to continue answering questions in the Q&A. There are some things that I just really want to double down on, because I saw these questions coming in time and time again. We saw a lot of things coming in with RSVPs as well, so I just want to confirm, is every student who is eligible for the California alt assessment, or the CAA, also eligible for the alt pathway. And then what about students who are eligible for the CASP? Could they be eligible for the alt pathway? We see a lot of those questions. Okay. Very black and white. This is an important piece, and a lot of people are kind of asking the same questions around that.

There is not a simple way to determine a significant cognitive disability that's called out in the law, and the way that was already established and used very frequently in education was the alt assessment tool that districts use to determine eligibility for the CAA, and so that really is the determining factor, and we are really talking about one to two percent. It's less than two percent. These are students that have significant cognitive disabilities or extensive support needs, as we often refer to them as, but they're students that are... It's not a huge number of students, but it is a very important group of students that have been unable to earn a diploma up to this point. And I will say to Lindsay, that made me think about, were the states getting ready to roll out a new IEP template that districts can use if they want to?

And a big conversation was this whole idea of parents having to choose whether their children were on a specific track, whether it was a certificate track or a diploma track. We're hoping that that can... we can start moving away from that, and that the assumption is that everyone in the state is on a diploma track, because everyone is a high school student that should earn a diploma and that can earn a diploma now, right? So we want to make sure that, when parents are asked this, whether... whatever grade that's in, that parents say, “I'd like my student to be on a diploma track and get access to their grade level standards.” And as Stephanie showed, you can still do all the other things, too. You're not trading off one thing for another, and their rights under the law are that they're accessing their grade level standards, not that they're sitting in a place where they're not accessing anything. So that's not the point either.

Right. And can the two of you think of any scenario where it would be valid for a district to say your child has to get the Certificate of Completion, they're not going to be eligible for the alt pathway? I mean, I think the way to think about a Certificate of Completion is it's not a plan, it's a default, right? So, if you are... Sorry. If you are... If you do not... If you're... For whatever reason, if a student's not able to meet all of their requirements by the time they're 22 and they're going to be leaving and graduating, then technically you could graduate them with a Certificate of Completion, because technically there's not criteria related to it. There's nothing... Really they're local. It's local, right? You're giving someone a right of passage. It's not... There's not a set of criteria like with the diploma where there's a minimum set of coursework. So, I mean, in accountability, it's basically... it's considered almost like a dropout, right?

Because you don't... you're not completing high school, you're getting a certificate and you're going on your way to the next place. So I think for parents, just thinking about being able to say these words, “I would like my student to receive a high school diploma, and I know that there's a pathway for them,” because there is. -- Yeah. And what about... We hear from a lot of families that are hearing from districts that are saying they're not set up for that yet. What can parents say if a district is saying, “We're not ready for the alt pathway yet. We'll let you know when we're set up.” What can parents say? It's not an option. That's what I would say.

And I say that because this has been enacted in the 22-23 school year, so every student who is in high school, or it continues to go into high school since that time, this is in ed code. This is a viable pathway for students who meet that eligibility, and so everything we do needs to map to that diploma and those diploma requirements, and we can do that no matter whether we're ready or not. There are kids getting high school diplomas in every high school in California, because that's what we do in high school. And so we need to push for how is this going to happen for our student. What supports and services need to be in place to ensure they have access to those courses, whether it's in general education or looking at how are we making sure our curriculum is aligned, but that the time for waiting is hence been. We need to get moving on it. It's in place and every child has a right to that.

Not only a right, but we have an obligation to ensure that they have that. And I think it's a question too that parents can ask about. If they're saying that they're not ready or that they don't have that as an option, what do the transcripts for students in high school look like? Because legitimately, everyone's supposed to be getting access to all the courses that they need to get access to their grade level standards, so we should see everyone having transcripts with courses, enrolled in courses for high school. So if we start there and map from that, they should be... Before the pathway even came about, everyone was supposed to be getting access to their grade level standards, so this is just... We've all come to a time where everyone... where we're going to follow the law and everyone needs to have access to a diploma.

And I think people... I think districts want to do that, want to do the right thing. I think it's just something that's maybe very new. And again, it's a very big shift in mindset, and there's all those questions that we got. These are all the sort of barriers that are in place, and a lot of them are mindset barriers. What do we do about grading? What do we do about... How do we decide all these things? All these things are surmountable, and I put in the answers a few times for when people are asking me about districts to go to the community of practice that Stephanie and one of our other colleagues at High Quality IEPs runs every month. There are so much... so many districts who have already gone through these questions, and have come on the other side. And then the last thing I'll say is that there are schools that have been inclusive schools from the beginning, and they've managed to include their students, just like my daughter was included in all of her high school courses, without having a special specialness, right? They adapted the curriculum to meet her needs.

She has alternate achievement standards, so she's not based... It wasn't based on the same level of grading, and she had access to aligned standards or standards that are aligned to grade level standards. So, with all those things in place, and a transcript in place, and a way to course code in place, it's very doable. So I think sometimes it feels like a huge undertaking that you have to create a whole other special system. I think we would argue you don't have to create another special system. Use the one you have with all your brilliant content teachers and the passions they have for what they're doing. And... Oh sorry, go ahead, Stephanie. In terms of that community of practice, if you are struggling, because I see a lot of people that are saying, “I'm struggling. My district's this... My... they're doing this,” or like lots of different things, we give you all of the transparent access to all the things. On that Padlet for the community of practice, there's a flier.

If you want to hand that off to your district and say, “You know what, it'd be really helpful if you attended this,” send them our way or give them our contact information. We are happy to help kickstart people that are feeling like sometimes it's one... it's a major barrier that they feel is insurmountable and we're like, wait, wait, wait, we can help with that. And so we want to make sure that there's not something that's getting stuck that's an easy fix, and that's what that community of practice is for. But also, if they just need someone and you're feeling like nothing's happening, I feel like you can refer them to us. We'll do the best we can to help and support and get things moving along. And Stephanie, you said that is included in the information we're going to be sharing from all your materials. It is. --Okay, okay, great. Perfect. And I know we're over time. Do you just have time for a couple additional questions?

I'm going to let Kristin go ahead and have time for a couple more questions, but I'm unable to do it if that's okay. Okay. Thank you so much, Stephanie. Thank you. I just wanted a couple additional points of clarification, Kristin. Thank you. When you talked about transcript, and this is what we've always heard from you all, is that the transcript should be a regular transcript, but we are seeing transcripts that are pointing out on the transcript, calling out alt pathway, alt pathway, alt pathway for those classes. So does that... Is that how it's supposed to look? Is there a problem? Should families be saying, “Can we change this transcript?” It's a regular class, but they're still denoting that these are special classes. Well, I think... I mean, the transcript is what's okay to put... to make in some type of indication that it's modified, but technically it should be whatever the course is, right?

So, if it's English Ten, there might be an asterisk and the asterisk means that it was modified. And someone asked too if there should... if anything should be noted on the diploma itself. The diploma should look exactly the same. There should be no notation on the diploma. Anything that's a little bit different would be on the transcript, but I haven't seen people write ‘alt pathway class,’ and I don't think that was ever the intention. The students need access to each of the grade level standards, or each of the courses that they need for graduation to meet the state minimum requirements, and those should be the courses that are notated on the transcript, because that's what they should be taking. Am I understanding what you're saying? Yes. Yeah. I think an advocate was telling us that they are hearing from some districts that they're recoding classes as an alt pathway class, and then they're using an alt curriculum within that class, and so I don't know if that's what we're seeing when we're seeing those different things on a transcript.

Yeah, I think that's... I mean, I guess it's up to districts how they want to... what they want to call things. I don't know that we can... That's their choice, but it seems like it would be easier just to call it English Ten with modifications or something, and then the... If their place... If they're in a classroom that's just with students with disabilities, then that's where they're getting it delivered, but that's different than what needed to be on the transcript. Right. Okay. That's... Yeah, that's questionable. Yeah. And I know that you covered this, but I saw some additional questions come into the Q&A about benefits. So again, I just wanted to really double down. Will a student lose their SSI, their Regional Center benefits, or the 18 to 22 program, or any other benefits with a diploma via this alt pathway? No.

-- I just want to make sure that parents hear that, because I think that's one of... I think that's a common myth out there. Yeah. And we've done training with the Regional Centers, with their service coordinators, to help them understand that students... and they do understand that students still have a right to their 18 to 22, their transition services. That said, there have been... There are situations where if a student graduates, they get a diploma on the pathway and they want to go on to something else, they don't want to be going back to the high school anymore or to the transition program, and they want to leave to go to adult services, that's something that the Regional Centers will look at on a case by case basis. So I won't speak for Regional Centers, but I'll say that that question has come up a lot. Like, well do we have to send... they got their diploma. They left at... They were done at 20 with all their courses, or 19.

Did they have to go to a district transition program or can they go to supportive employment? Can they go do something else? And the answer is, in our state, it's supposed to be individualized. Right. Thank you. And Kristin, is there anything else that you want to cover before we wrap it up? Yeah, I would just say, in the spirit of all this, I hope that we can just shift from not if a student can get a diploma or this whole thing about a certificate track, and we really start talking about how will each student have the opportunity to earn a diploma, just like any other student would have the opportunity to earn a diploma, and I'm excited that this last group of students, who was really the only group of students who couldn't earn a diploma, can now. And so, I think it will take some time for the system to adjust and catch up with that.

Fortunately, there's some good resources out there. You all have now access to the same resources that schools do, and we're here to support, and I guess I just hope that parents feel like they're not in this alone. Thank you so much. Thank you, Kristin and Stephanie, who had to step away, and thank you for staying long for all this incredible information, answering so many questions. And, I mean, it's a great point, what Kristin just said. You now have access to all of those materials, and I highly encourage everyone to share those with districts and definitely share the information about how districts can have access to Kristin and Stephanie and ask their own questions, because like Kristin said, this is newish for everyone, but people are still getting used to this, and I think most people want to be on the same page, so we want to make sure that if they have questions that they can get answered as well, so, and Kristen... -- And also just... Yeah, and also just to let you know, your local SELPA directors also are very aware of this and could be a valuable resource.

The SELPA director from San Diego, who now does the community of practice and is now in charge of High Wuality IEPs, is one of... is Stephanie's partner in this community of practice that they have monthly, and SELPA has... They can play a big role in helping to support their districts, so if you haven't talked to your SELPA director, I recommend you do that too. Thank you so much for pointing that out. I think it was last year, our SELPA director did a training for all of the districts in our SELPA, so that's another great thing that parents can do to take back to your district. I’d request that. --Absolutely. Or ask your CAC. Yeah. -- Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Or ask your CAC, which is your Community Advisory Committee for your SELPA.

And Kristin, thank you, because I know you were deeply involved in the creation and the implementation of this pathway. I want this to work. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Thank you for the opportunities that you're creating for our children and their futures and our community. Some of the most important points that I jotted down today that we were getting a lot of questions. This is not an alt diploma. It is a pathway for all students to earn a regular diploma. Your child can earn credits for the alt pathway in any classroom setting. They do not have to be in a special education classroom to qualify. Again, this pathway was designed to give our kids more opportunities to be included, to receive a standards based education, and to support potential work and higher education opportunities.

It was not designed as an excuse to segregate them. And an alternate curriculum is not required for the alt pathway, so if you want your child to receive modified state standards based on the core connectors, have this discussion with your IEP team and your child will not lose any public benefits by earning a diploma through the alt pathway. They can also still attend the 18 to 22 transition program if they are eligible, and so much more. So I know what everyone's going to be doing this afternoon, right? Digging in, digging in before the holidays to all of the amazing information that we got from Kristin and Stephanie. So, thank you again to Kristin and Stephanie, to all of our partner organizations. We are all undivided in our support and belief in you, our families, our allies, and our community. If you need help, like Kristin and Stephanie said, please reach out.

At Undivided, our mission is to support you so your children can thrive and we want you to thrive too. We'll see you soon.