Incompletion leads to 120 seniors on student conduct

Completing the required financial literacy course only become a priority for many seniors after they were placed on senior conduct for not doing so. In all, 120 seniors were placed on senior conduct – many because they didn’t complete the financial literacy course.

The 2015-2016 seniors had only this year to complete the course, which might be an acceptable justification for the wide rate of incompletion. But as May 30 approaches, there is not much admin can do for seniors – it’s time to look at future years with the results of this year in mind.

To admin’s defense, the incompletion was due in part to procrastination and when that’s the problem, there is nothing able to stop it except for an imminent due date. Students had a year to complete it. There’s no excuse for anybody, right?

But it seems that that is exactly the problem: two years is more than enough time. Procrastination is procrastination; students are used to taking a missing assignment as consequence for it, and didn’t anticipate being denied walking the graduation stage as a possibility. Knowing the work ethics of high school students, it’s somewhat irresponsible to assign a course required for graduation to students’ discipline to complete. We fool ourselves by thinking a fast year won’t sneak up on us in May, so we say “tomorrow” or “next week” until we’re placed on senior conduct.

It’s pleasantly surprising there weren’t more seniors on senior conduct.

This situation should be taken as a wake-up call, a learning experience for future students and admin. Admin could look into preventing this senior conduct overload by designating on-site hours for students to work on the course.

One opportunity that comes to mind is the intervention schedule coming to Roseville High School next year. While setting aside only some of the intervention periods won’t be enough time to entirely complete the course, it could get students at least started and get help from teachers with it along the way.

This system would also provide students who don’t have access to a computer or internet at home with the tools needed to work on the course. It’s not likely that a lack of internet access is the case for all the seniors on conduct, but with an option that can theoretically benefit all students, no matter their impediment, it could be a viable option to consider.

As for students, there’s only so much admin can do to help. Seeing the outcome of this year, it should be in best interest to finish the course when possible.

The position that some seniors were put in and the consequences of not completing the course weren’t unforeseen, given that the course’s graduation weight was publicly disclosed. It’s sad that 2016 seniors paid the price for a better system next year, so the least we can do is learn from their mistakes.

Admin can’t do everything. There’s always room for improvement, but they shouldn’t catch all blame when fault partly falls on the inevitable student work ethic.