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Ronderkus Ben (front), a Junior at Ville Platte High School, stocks air conditioner filters with Cody Vidrine (back) at Ace Hardware in Ville Platte on Monday. Ben is one of the eight students at VPHS that is gaining real world experience through a new opportunity students have to earn a Louisiana Career Diploma. (Gazette photo by Elizabeth West)

Down a new path

With new program, LAA 1 students can now earn a high school diploma

By: ELIZABETH WEST
Associate Editor

For the first time students being assessed on the Louisiana Alternative Assessment (LAA 1) are being given the opportunity to earn the coveted high school diploma.
In previous years, students in Louisiana received a diploma on graduation night that meant they had successfully earned at least 23 carnegie units, while students with disabilities, who were not taking traditional classes, only had the option to receive a certificate of achievement.
However, today Louisiana has three different high school diplomas that students can earn, and for the students with disabilities this new piece of paper stamped with a Louisiana Career Diploma seal can open doors to chances and opportunities they never had before.
Roxane West, who is the Special Education Director for the Evangeline Parish School District, said, “The certificate of achievement was not endorsed by the state and it just showed that someone attended school for 12 years, but the career diploma is going to now allow these students to show that they have employability skills and that they are career ready.”
With this new diploma though, comes new expectations for the students that are eligible to work towards earning the career diploma.
Before the course work can begin however, the students eligible for this new pathway to success must be determined.
According to West, “because this was the first year to implement this, students that would benefit from this were identified by analyzing their previous coursework.”
From here on out, students will begin being identified as potential eligible students by the time they are in the sixth grade. Once an eligible student reaches the ninth grade, he or she will then begin working towards earning what is called course experiences instead of carnegie units.
The course experiences consist of: four English credits, four Math credits, two Science credits, two Social Studies credits, two to four Elective credits, and seven to nine Career Preparation credits.
West said, “These courses will be different than for example the English 1, 2, 3, and 4 that other high school students are taking because these courses will be at the students with disabilities functioning level. But, these courses have still raised the expectation we have for these students.”
Ville Platte High School has been the first school in the parish to begin implementing these new course experiences, but Pine Prairie High School and Mamou High School will start to offer this career path diploma for students with disabilities during the second half of this school year. There have been no students identified at Basile High School as being eligible for this diploma, therefore these course experiences will not be offered at the school until they are needed.
Throughout their coursework, students will also take classes that will educate them on the real world by teaching them things such as interviewing skills before they begin working at local businesses to gain real work experience during their junior and senior years of high school.
VPHS has a total of eight students currently that are learning first hand what it’s like to be employed. The businesses they are working at consist of: Ace Hardware, the Evangeline Parish Clerk of Court’s Office, Champagne’s, Doug Ashy Building Materials, the Evangeline Parish Library, Ville Platte High School, the Evangeline Parish School Board Media Center, and the EPSB Maintenance Department.
Educator Tracey Jagneaux, who oversees the students’ progress in the workforce and will provide them with a grade in this area, believes that working with these Ville Platte businesses is going to open the students’ eyes to what it takes to be successful in a career one day.
Jagneaux said, “This is allowing the kids to be able to come out of their job experience with applicable knowledge of how jobs work, and how the real world works. They are learning what it’s like to be an adult.”
So far, according to Jagneaux, who transports the students to their job and then back to school four days a week, this transition into a new way of educating this specific group of students has been working well. This is not only because of the students’ willingness to accept this new challenge but also because of the support from the employers that are playing an instrumental role in positively impacting the lives of these students.
Jagneaux said, “All of the kids seem to like their jobs and I know that they are learning a lot. It also helps that we have employers that have also embraced this process and are willing to give us feedback on the performance of the students, which has all been positive at this point.”
For the school’s principal Kelly LaFleur, this opportunity that her students are now being offered is one that she sees as being able to help students discover what career they should consider pursuing once their career diploma is earned and high school is a thing of the past.
LaFleur said, “This new program is a benefit to our students because along with the work experience they can receive, they are also able to explore different career options for after graduation. That’s something that they never had before, but they always definitely deserved.”

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