The State Board of Education State Board of Education will ask for a waiver in its NCLB Accountability Workbook that students in alternative high schools and dropout recovery programs also have additional time to earn a diploma. The federal No Child Left Behind Act essentially counts students as dropouts if they do not graduate during the traditional four-year high school period unless the state has a waiver to allow certain groups of students longer to graduate.

Michigan already has exceptions from the federal four-year high school graduation requirement for students with disabilities and who have missed school because of an illness. The waiver, if approved, would allow students in those dropout programs an additional year to graduate at the discretion of the district and the department.

The department had proposed to seek the waiver for dropout recovery, but board members argued some of the same arguments applied to alternative high school programs.

And Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Flanagan argued in the long term federal officials needed to revise how they measure graduation.