In the past month, the New York Times has had several articles and blog posts about proposals to cut short high school.
In some cases, the idea is to eliminate the last two years of high school for very smart kids, and to get them into community colleges faster.
Dozens of public high schools in eight states will introduce a program
next year allowing 10th graders who pass a battery of tests to get a
diploma two years early and immediately enroll in community college.Students who pass but aspire to attend a selective college may continue
with college preparatory courses in their junior and senior years,
organizers of the new effort said. Students who fail the 10th-grade
tests, known as board exams, can try again at the end of their 11th and
12th grades. The tests would cover not only English and math but also
subjects like science and history.
In other cases, the goal is just to eliminate senior year, which is often a complete waste of time, after the kids learn of their admission to college. Instead of putting penalties on kids who slack off, due to senioritis, the proposal is just to cut out that year of school entirely.
Cynical Me worries about these plans. I suspect that the real goal of these proposal is to save money and won't benefit the kids. Most 15 years aren't mature enough for college and need the structure of a high school.
On the other hand, it would have benefits for the community college system, which is a good thing. It would also mean that smart kids would be appropriately challenged. If public moneys are diverted to community colleges, rather than high schools, it wouldn't bother me entirely.
It will be interesting to see how all this plays out.
Apt. 11d 
“In some cases, the idea is to eliminate the last two years of high school for very smart kids, and to get them into community colleges faster.”
A similar program has already existed for some time in Washington State under the name “Running Start.” I have an auntie who teaches community college in Washington, and she has nothing but complaints about the program. Marginal students use it as a way to avoid going to high school.
The program probably needs a tighter intake filter. I don’t think there’s a lot of point in sending high school students to take English Comp at community college, since the equivalent should be available in their high schools, but there are a lot of community college courses that have no high school equivalents.
Despite the problems with execution, I think there’s a lot of value in the concept. My feeling is that the old biological clock ticks differently depending on socioeconomic level. If we know that the odds are that a girl is going to have a kid somewhere between 18 and 20, it’s better that she be well into her nursing program at the community college rather than just finishing high school.
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In other cases, the goal is just to eliminate senior year, which is often a complete waste of time, after the kids learn of their admission to college.
I seem to recall not having my college admission letters until the spring of my senior year. I also remember doing the applications over Christmas break of my senior year. Is my memory off or has the time-frame shifted?
Whatever the point from a pedagogical stand point, skipping the senior year is a non-starter in most of the country for sound football-related reasons. But, I do remember not doing particularly much the last semester of my senior year.
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“Is my memory off or has the time-frame shifted?”
There are early entrance applications due in the fall (November?), but I think you’re basically right. It’s spring of senior year, rather than fall, that is most problematic for college bound high school students. However, for non-selective college bound students, the whole year can be a problem.
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If public moneys are diverted to community colleges, rather than high schools, it wouldn’t bother me entirely.
Somehow, I doubt this is the plan. I expect that the new student will simply be expected to pay his or her own way in higher education. So I’m with cynical you, I’m afraid.
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Yes, there is no way the money follows the kids to community colleges. The money never follows the kids.
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In Minnesota, we’ve had a program to put high-performing high school students into college… The class-rank requirements are pretty stiff, but students can qualify as juniors or seniors and the state pays for tuition and books. IF they can get admitted, the state will pay for public or private colleges or universities.
I teach these students and they’re great!! I’d love to have more of them — they’re organized, engaged and fun. I’ve only had one who had issues that could have been resolved more easily if she’d been more mature… but, she sorted things out and finished the class.
On the other hand — I have many HS graduates at my CC who can’t read. We do a HUGE number of remedial classes, so I’d be in favor of tougher graduation standards so that they might learn these things in high school instead of needing to take (and pay for) the classes later.
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I stand corrected. The money will follow the kids in states where Norwegians and other civic-minded types run things.
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“I stand corrected. The money will follow the kids in states where Norwegians and other civic-minded types run things.”
It does with Running Start, I believe. But, I think WA probably falls under the Norwegian/Swedish exemption.
I’ve never gotten this push to get kids into community college, but I think that’s ’cause in the environments I’ve seen, CC contains a high proportion of students with poor preparation (as philosopherP describes). I think CC’s vary, but if they’re mostly populated with students who have poor prep, I can’t imagine wanting my high-performing student to go there as a way to learn calculus, for example.
The schemes seem to be poorly thought out.
AmyP’s suggestion — that the girl who is going to be pregnant at 20 get a head start on her vocational training — might be valid. But it’s the old concern we’ve had that there’s no educational path for those who are looking for shorter training to a job rather than a general education, either through desire or ability.
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bj,
Another issue is that there are a lot of potentially harmful traditions associated with the senior year of high school (which is why some communities have alternate entertainment for graduation night to keep the kids sober and off the road). I can understand the desire to short circuit the whole homecoming-prom-graduation-senior-trip thing and get kids going directly on a career trajectory. As I’ve mentioned before, “Who is going to die this year?” was a real question at my fairly small high school. (I didn’t do 12th grade, myself.)
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Of course, if you leave school after 11th grade, you can just do all of your victory-lap drinking events a year earlier. It isn’t any harder for a 17 year-old than an 18 year old.
I remember my graduation and we were drinking semi-openly in front of my parents and very openly (as in sitting at the table with) other parents. Then we drove 30 miles to sit by the dam. We did have a designated driver. The only thing we got reprimanded for was getting the dogs drunk.
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“Of course, if you leave school after 11th grade, you can just do all of your victory-lap drinking events a year earlier. It isn’t any harder for a 17 year-old than an 18 year old.”
That’s true if everybody leaves after 11th grade, but if it’s a minority of students, there wouldn’t be the critical mass. You probably wouldn’t have gotten the dogs drunk all by yourself.
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Or you could wind-up with two critical masses. That is, everyone in your year parties when the first set leaves after 11th grade and those that are left (plus their friends who have not left town) party after 12th grade.
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I’m with MH. (And my memory is walking my early admission application to the admissions office in the early fall of my senior year, to hear before Christmas.) I simply thought the reasoning about “the prevalence of early admissions” rather specious. What percentage of students actually apply for early admission/early decision? Now, okay, what percentage is it among the social class of the NYTimes reporters/perceived readership? Because I betcha that latter one’s higher than the former.
NYS also tends to put its government/civics class in the senior year, so I guess politics doesn’t matter! I knew it!
Okay, sure, in the small towns upstate our parties tended to involve trips to the 24-hour supermarket and dares to each other to tip that cow/chase those sheep, but my social group (the nerds/arty types) never did anything depicted in that story. And my brother got arrested for drinking in his sophomore year of high school, so we can’t blame senioritis for that one. Not to say there aren’t reasonable reasons to move things up (cost for one), but I’d want harder data for any social trend rationales.
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Nobody actually tried to tip the cow, did they? I’m guessing that it might be possible given some strange combination of circumstances, but all we only talked about cow tipping around people who had never been with 1000 yards of a cow before. We didn’t have sheep or a 24-hour supermarket.
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The 24-hour thing was new when I was a teen (hence exciting and worth a trip at 3 am to look around), but we were in a small city with lots of farms surrounding, so not completely rural. I was living in the farmland area, and never really had a cow-tipping urge, but some of the guys from town really were into actually tipping a cow some day. (My opinion of cows at the time was that they were mean, smelly, and heavy and I hated them; I would have loved to see one of the guys try.) As far as I know, they never got around to it….
The entire county only had three high schools (I’m pretty sure?) which was centered on a city or town, so there was a mix of farm and city in each. With corresponding ideas of what was amusing.
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There is a bill like this before the legislature. The money is not going to follow the kid. The kid who is probably far too immature to apply himself at college (community or otherwise) is going to be set free. My guess is that most of these kids will give college a try, bail out after a semester or two and be stuck working in the service industry for the rest of their lives.
This is just a way to quit paying for public education earlier.
Motivated kids will choose to stay in high school, take advanced classes and head to the university.
My daughter is a senior and had applied to every college by January 1, some earlier. All of her friends are the same way. Most knew where they were going by Christmas, a handful are deciding now when the financial aid packets are coming out.
Oh, and as far as drinking, etc. being tied solely to senior year celebrations, not my experience. If a kid’s gonna drink, they don’t need Senior Keg to urge them to do it. They’ll find another reason to celebrate.
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I agree with Lisa V. This program could (will?) end up halting public schooling in the 10th grade. The laggards will receive remedial schooling through the 12th grade, or until they pass the proficiency tests. Whichever is cheaper. Oops! sorry! Whichever is most cost effective for the public and our young American citizens.
I predict… 10th grade proficiency exam. Those who pass may transfer to CC, or private junior colleges, for the next two years to brush up their preparation for academic colleges. A certain number will choose pre-career programs, such as nursing, accountancy or HVAC. No one will want to remain in high school who can avoid it.
After all, if your child can win admission to Tufts after 10th grade, why would he hang out in high school for another two years? If the 10th grade so-called board examination determines college readiness, why take AP when you can take real college courses? The high school courses may be free, but they would come at the cost of delaying entry into the workforce by 2 years.
Help with tuition at CC will be promised as the program is introduced, then gradually dropped, in stages, as the economic stresses of dealing with the baby boomers’ retirement really hits home.
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Our public schools have a drop-out rate of something like 33% and everybody would love to improve that. If you can’t improve, you can hide it a bit. And this would work much better than our school district’s policy of claiming all of those kids must have transferred.
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Let’s remember that the high school graduation rate is not all that fabulous currently. What the dropout rate is is controversial, but it’s something like 30%, and far higher in specific demographics. Nevada has a 47% graduation rate.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2009/0609/p02s13-usgn.html
There must be at least a fraction of that 30% who drop out who would find technical, career-relevant coursework much more motivating than standard high school.
“After all, if your child can win admission to Tufts after 10th grade, why would he hang out in high school for another two years? If the 10th grade so-called board examination determines college readiness, why take AP when you can take real college courses? The high school courses may be free, but they would come at the cost of delaying entry into the workforce by 2 years.”
Our kids are in private school, so we would save substantially on high school tuition if they did early entrance, although I’m a very, very big fan of AP courses. On the other hand, I was recently reading a book on gifted education (possibly Karen Rogers’ Re-Forming Gifted Education) and the author said that kids who do early entrance are more likely to do graduate degrees or other stuff before beginning a career, so in their case, it doesn’t speed them into the workplace.
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While I have no experience with the States, I went to high school in Ontario back when we had grade 13, though the rest of Canada didn’t. I noticed a huge difference between Ontario students and those from other provinces in terms of actual readiness to live away from home, drink responsibly (and since we were 19, legally), study/budget time, and write better essays – which makes sense, as the OAC program was designed to teach just that.
I’m curious about the statement that this might better suit smart students – if high school classes are too easy, why not address that? Granted, I took my core subjects in a gifted program, but I don’t recall high school being easy.
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There must be at least a fraction of that 30% who drop out who would find technical, career-relevant coursework much more motivating than standard high school.
Why should the entire system be revamped for the 30% who drop out? In order to increase (maybe) the prospects of perhaps 8 – 10% of the school population, we need to decrease the amount of free education for 90 – 92% of the population?
Today, we could do away with the dropout problem, by decreeing anyone who finishes freshman year to have completed a basic high school education. That wouldn’t increase the educational outcomes for the dropouts. The proposal to end high school for most students after 10th grade only addresses the dropout issues by shortening the time span in which students could drop out.
…kids who do early entrance are more likely to do graduate degrees or other stuff before beginning a career, so in their case, it doesn’t speed them into the workplace.
If the kids take a law degree before beginning a career, they’re still more educated at a younger age than they were under the previous system. If they live to 80, they would have two more years working as a doctor, lawyer, MBA. In that, I’m assuming that a large percentage of the high school population is mature enough to handle “real” college at 16.
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I actually gave the question of abolishing HS after 10th grade (as per a Leon Botstein essay from 1997) as a final exam in my advanced composition class this term. All the students except two opposed ending HS at 10th grade. The two who supported it were 2 of my top 3 students, and one was from a very difficult economic background/urban HS.
Parents of gifted kids like the idea of opportunities to leave HS earlier because they like the idea of their kids being challenged.
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