Leaders in K-12 education in McLean County said mandated courses make it harder for high school students that already have tight schedules.
Three McLean County school superintendents and the head of the Bloomington Career Academy [BCA] spoke on a panel at the annual State of Education event Friday. It was hosted at Heartland Community College by the McLean County Chamber of Commerce.
“I think sometimes mandates on the schools often sound really great. They come from really good intentions,” said Bryce Hansen, director of the BCA. “But sometimes they have unintended consequences.”
Hansen was responding to a question from Molly Allen, regional superintendent at the Regional Office of Education, who was leading the K-12 panel. Allen asked whether it would be good for Illinois to mandate high schoolers take internships before graduation.
The BCA provides high school students from school districts from McLean and surrounding counties with opportunities for industry-recognized certifications, dual credit, connections and career-related experience. While many students at the BCA enter the workforce after high school, including with internships, 71% of BCA students also take courses at a two- or four-year college or university after graduation.
LeRoy Superintendent Jeff Baughman said in a new age of education, where the four-year degree is not quite as reliably the ticket to the best job opportunities, it may help to loosen high school graduation requirements to better serve students for whom college is not the right fit.
“The key is being able to keep things flexible, so every individual student has the opportunity that fits them. When we start mandating too much, so, ‘Hey, we now need to mandate internships.’ Well, maybe for certain kids, they need to really load up on their science classes because they want to be a doctor or they want to do 'X,'” said Baughman.
“So I think any direction you go, while mandates are typically well intended, they can also just sometimes be more of a headline than, are they really helping us in schools?” said Baughman.
Mandates 'come with a cost'
District 87 superintendent David Mouser added mandates come with a cost. He used an example of an incoming requirement for the 2027-28 school year that Illinois schools offer mental health screenings.
“Who's paying for that? How do we do it? How do we make sure it's done correctly? And that just falls to the school, right? It's a societal issue that we're being mandated to address, and yet there's no direction in terms of how, and there's no money that comes with it,” said Mouser.
Hansen said it was a “very valuable” step taken by the Illinois General Assembly to loosen one requirement on schools, allowing students to take Career Technical Education [CTE] courses in place of otherwise-required foreign language courses.
“A kid's high school schedule is already really, really tight. It's really tough. If you know any school counselors, just ask them. It's tough to find space, and so the threat was kind of having a two-year foreign language requirement for graduation, you're going to have to sub something out,” said Hansen.
The new rule came as a welcome change to McLean County superintendents, though there was also concern from teachers in an already sparsely-populated field of study that loosening foreign language requirements would make it even harder to solve teacher shortages. Superintendents of McLean County’s two largest school districts, Unit 5 and District 87, both said after the bill was passed that many school districts have trouble filling foreign language teacher roles.
Presidents of the three higher education institutions in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois State University, Illinois Wesleyan University and Heartland Community College, also spoke on a panel during the event. They discussed how each school is preparing its students to be ready for careers in the future, including new and emerging technologies and the value of college degrees in today’s work climate.
