RÉSUMÉ DIGEST
ACT 403 (HB 462) 2015 Regular Session Cox
Existing law provides curriculum requirements for high school career major programs for
receipt of a career diploma by students who successfully complete such requirements.
Requires completion of a regionally designed series of Career and Technical Education Jump
Start coursework and workplace-based learning experiences leading to a statewide or
regional Jump Start credential. Further requires that students complete at least two social
studies units and that one such unit be U.S. History, AP U.S. History, or I.B. U.S. History.
Relative to the remaining social studies unit:
Existing law allows one unit of Civics. Prior law allowed ½ unit of Government, AP US
Government and Politics: Comparative, or AP US Government and Politics: US and ½ unit
of Economics, AP Macroeconomics, or AP Microeconomics to be taken, for a total of one
unit, as an alternative to Civics. New law requires one unit selected from the
government-related courses and removes the economics courses as options.
Existing law provides for the TOPS-Tech Award for students pursuing certain skill or
occupational training. Provides high school curriculum requirements students must meet to
be eligible for this award. New law retains these requirements for students graduating from
high school through the 2016-17 school year and changes the requirements for those
graduating from high school in the 2017-18 school year and thereafter to align the curriculum
in all areas with that required for receipt of a career diploma as specified in existing law and
new law.
Existing law, relative to a TOPS-Tech Early Start Award, provides that it may be used by
students in the 11th and 12th grades for any technical or applied course leading to an
Industry-Based Certification, a Certificate of Applied Science, and a Certificate of Technical
Sciences offered at a La. public or nonpublic postsecondary education institution or by any
La. training provider recognized by the La. Workforce Commission and approved by the
State Bd. of Elementary and Secondary Education as provided in existing law if such
certification is approved by the Workforce Investment Council. Provides eligibility
requirements for receipt of the award, including scoring at least 15 on the English subsection
and 15 on the mathematics subsection of the ACT PLAN assessment. New law adds that a
student also may be eligible if he attains such scores on the ACT (or an equivalent
concordant value of the SAT) or attains a silver level score on the assessments of the ACT
WorkKeys system.
Act No. 403 also contains provision for the recodification of a change to the TOPS law made
by Act No. 101 in accordance with Act No. 227, which recodified the existing TOPS law.
See résumé digest of Act No. 101 for discussion of that change.
Effective August 1, 2015.
(Amends R.S. 17:183.3(B)(2)(d); Adds R.S. 17:5022, 5026(A) and (C), and 5081(D)(4))(See
§§4-6 and 8-10 relative to codification of new law.)