New Plan Lets Top HS Students Graduate 2 Years Early 425
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that education commissioners in Connecticut, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont have pledged to sign up 10 to 20 schools each for a pilot project that would allow 10th graders who pass a battery of tests to get a diploma two years early and immediately enroll in community college. The new system of high school coursework with the accompanying board examinations is modeled largely on systems in high-performing nations including Denmark, England, Finland, France and Singapore. 'We've looked at schools all over the world, and if you walk into a high school in the countries that use these board exams, you'll see kids working hard, whether they want to be a carpenter or a brain surgeon.' says Marc S. Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy. Kentucky's commissioner of education, Terry Holliday, says high school graduation requirements have long been based on having students accumulate enough course credits to graduate. 'We've been tied to seat time for 100 years. This would allow an approach based on subject mastery — a system based around move-on-when-ready,' says Holliday. However some school officials are concerned about the social and emotional implications of 16-year-olds going off to college. 'That's far too young to be thrown into an environment with college students who are about 18 to 23 years old. ... Most of them are just not mature enough to handle that,' says Mary Anderson, headmaster of Pinkerton Academy."
"...far too young..." (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why go to community college? (Score:2, Interesting)
Preach on! My school offered a similar program (mid and late 90s), where you didn't "graduate" early, but were sent to the local community college for classes and credits were applied back to your High School - this gave a lot of the students that participated (that I spoke with at least) a pretty negative opinion of the whole advanced education thing.
Chicken or Egg? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's far too young to be thrown into an environment with college students who are about 18 to 23 years old
(1) you require college students to have a HS diploma,
(2) you're requiring students (generally) to complete 12 years of education, and
(3) you don't let them start until they're between 5 and 6
It's not much of a stretch to realize that you're not going to find many 16 year olds in college.
That said, there is still a lot of maturing to do for most 16 year olds. Even a lot of 18 year olds are pretty slim on the maturity front. I'll be honest, I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be sending my 16 year old off to college somewhere. A local CC, though, wouldn't be a big deal.
It's all about individual cases (Score:2, Interesting)
I went to the University of New Mexico at 14. Graduated at 19, Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. in engineering. Masters from Purdue at 21. I'm now 23 and a semester away from my Ph.D.
Believe it or not, I am extremely social!
My girlfriend, who is a foreign national, started her University studies at 16.
It is all about individual cases. Great to see more flexibility in the educational system.
Poppycock! (Score:3, Interesting)
'That's far too young to be thrown into an environment with college students who are about 18 to 23 years old. ... Most of them are just not mature enough to handle that,' says Mary Anderson, headmaster of Pinkerton Academy."
Speaking as a 19-year old who is attending a community college with a high enrolment of under-18's (via the Running Start [k12.wa.us] program) I can say with full confidence that a lot of them are quite capable of handling it. They tend to place into the same classes as most freshmen anyways, they do about as well, and most of them adjust quite easily to the community college culture.
CC is easy stuff, not much harder than high school in the first place. I think this is a great move - it's at least worth a try.
Re:"...far too young..." (Score:2, Interesting)
Wasn't there an article on here recently about US college freshman being less prepared than in years prior?
Re:Why go to community college? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:maturity? (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to work at a college. You would be scared to meet the parents of the kids enrolling there. you'd think little johnny was 12, not 19. Hell, most 18 year olds aren't mature enough, but you know what, eventually, they become that way, or they drop out. Not everybody gets to be an astronaut when they grow up (I say as I look at my demotivational poster)
I started college at 16 part time, found things like WRI121 incredibly easy, compared to AP English, which would have gotten me the same credits.. In fact, by the time I graduated high school, I had enough credits to get to other schools Transfer requirements, which are often much different than admissions requirements.
But damn. At 17, my grandpa and his buddies lied about their ages so they could fight in a war. And now, we can't have kids in classes with people a few years older then them? Boy do I feel alot older than I am.. I'm starting to sound like my Grandpa.
Drop out (Score:5, Interesting)
I hated HS and would have done anything to get out early.
In the end, as there was no early out, I simply dropped out of HS entirely. A bit thereafter I took the insanely easy GED exam, got my paper and started at my local community college in what would have been my senior year in HS.
I don't regret that decision. Never have. And once you have your BS/BA no one cares about your HS history.
Re:It's all about individual cases (Score:2, Interesting)
I went to the University of New Mexico at 14. Graduated at 19, Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. in engineering. Masters from Purdue at 21. I'm now 23 and a semester away from my Ph.D.
Believe it or not, I am extremely social!
You may be "social", but I guarantee most people find you obnoxious and annoying when you are trying to be "social". Look at the way you introduced yourself. QED.
Re:Why go to community college? (Score:3, Interesting)
I had the opposite experience. I flunked Calc 2 a couple of times at the local community college (MCC) before taking it at the nearby university (ASU) and passing with an A.
Re:Ill placed worries (Score:4, Interesting)
I was not ready either emotionally or academically, but I went to college and struggled through. I did enjoy myself, and I did learn a lot, but I wasn't ready. Engineering school was tough. If I went to liberal arts school, I think I would have had a harder time socially and an easier time academically. I think engineering schools are easier socially, because all the kids are nerds, and they tend to be more open-minded, more practical, and less socially exclusive than liberal arts students.
I think that most kids who are academically ready for college two years early probably aren't ready socially. And it's not good that they are thrust into the role of "fully responsible wage earner" two years early. I don't really see what problem this is trying to solve.
Re:Ill placed worries (Score:2, Interesting)
While I don't disagree with you in principle, you're wrong in fact. A little Shakespeare will show it plainly:
Romeo & Juliet [mit.edu]
In short, people have never thought marrying at 14 a great idea. 16, on the other hand, we see Capulet/Shakespeare finds quite a good age for a girl to marry. And that's when we're suggesting we send some to college, so things haven't changed all that much.
Re:Why go to community college? (Score:4, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I was a Foreign Language Assistant in a vocational school in Germany.
This sounds exactly like Germany with their vocational schools and apprenticeship system.
Want to do a skilled trade? Go to school and learn all about it until age 16, then you're off on an apprenticeship for a year or two. Then you can come back for more school afterwards, or continue working (I think).
Want to go to university? You have two options AFAIK: be smart enough in the initial weeding out process to go the Gymnasium route (that's their word for what we would generally consider as AP classes in high school, except the school is entirely devoted to AP students), or you can do your apprenticeship and come back to school and do I think 2 years of Fachoberschule (vocational/technical secondary school). With an FOS diploma, you're allowed to go to university, at least in Hessen. I can't comment on other federal states.
My info might not be 100% accurate... I only observed it in action and participated from a teacher's perspective.
Re:Ill placed worries (Score:3, Interesting)
the problem is, the test is not likely to test emotional maturity. They might have the book learnin' but they won't have the lived experience. The teenaged brain is literally missing important parts that aren't fully developed until 19 or 20, mostly having to do with risk assessment and sociality. There's a reason why a 16 yr old is many times more likely to wreck a car than a 19 year old.
It is certainly true that various people mature at different rates... But those rates aren't directly tied to the number of years they've been alive.
It isn't like there's some "maturity lobe" that sprouts out of your brain on your 19th birthday.
I've seen plenty of mature 16-year-olds who are more than capable of handling themselves in a college environment. I've seen plenty of 30-year-olds who really aren't mature enough to be living independently.
Re:Ill placed worries (Score:3, Interesting)
They're only not ready now because the normal age is older. We had this problem in ontario when they got rid of grade 13, oh the tragedy that 17/18 year olds would be too young for university (compared to the previous years 18/19 year olds, they aren't mature enough blah blah blah. Well you know what, when everyone else is 17, it's not really a problem. The problem was more on our end as the institutions because we now had to (for example) shift how much alcohol we could serve, and to whom and had to start policy alcohol policies in residences (since when students were entering at 18 ish some of them could drink right away others had to wait until december ish, but now the presumption is that no one is 19 and able to drink). Granted that is a problem with alcohol age, not with students particularly. If you set the entrance bar for university as based on academic achievement, everyone who shows up will be there because of academic achievement, and you'll have a new social norm. The transition from one system to another is messy, really messy, I hate to say it. There are going to be a lot of angry bitter 18 year olds that just wasted two years of their lives in highschool when some 16 year old upstart didn't have to go through that. But at the end of the transition you have a much better collection of students, who aren't wasting years of their lives pretending like high school matters, and actually getting on with life and towards earning money.
Honestly, high school makes you lazy and stupid, especially if you started out smart. It's boring, and it teaches you that you can do well enough with no effort. Then they get to university when half our students are from india, the middle east and china, and those guys, I hate to say, didn't move 10 time zones because they were lazy dunces. They're smart, they work hard, they're focused, and they make our domestic students (myself included) look like dull speedbumps. Granted it's reading week so even as a PhD student I can't be expected to be doing work right now rather than posting on /. but I went in to fetch a book yesterday and all the chinese grad students were there, and working.
I have some WoW friends who happen to live near me that are just out of highschool. They're smart guys, one is in comp sci, the other going into engineering. But my god highschool taught them to be lazy. No late penalties, no motivation to get work done quickly because you can breeze through doing it the night before. These guys have developed the same terrible habits I had coming out of highschool, and it has taken me years to break out of those bad habits. Once you discover it's easy to be lazy and still do well, it's hard to train yourself differently. Another guy wants to be an artist. Well he could have been an artist last year maybe (as in enroll in a university fine arts programme), but you know, he kinda felt like he wanted to spend another year in highschool, become a bit more mature. Waste of bloody time and money, he doesn't have any meaningful courses to take and 'working on his profile' isn't going to help him when someone else, who's got an equally good profile did it in less time. When you build a system around assuming people will probably stupid, they probably will be.
To me the biggest risks of young people in university is money, and driving. You need to learn to drive, ideally from someone with experience... like say a parent, and you usually can't afford to pay enough for the experience you should have. If you don't live at home when you're 16 it's hard to find someone to teach you that will work for free. Money is a big problem. How do you pay rent, how do you pay for your health, how do you do your taxes, how do you recognize reasonable and unreasonable spending (for someone to live on their own). Those are things you have time to learn in the last 2 years of high school because you have time. It's probably manageable but still troubling. It might lead to more people going to university closer to home, which is a double edged sword, you're not exploiting talent as optimally, but then the talent you do have has a lot less debt, and that's probably for the better.
Re:Ill placed worries (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ill placed worries (Score:5, Interesting)
A "helicopter parent" hovers over her child at all times. Phoning the teach or professor to complain of every bad grade has recently escalated into accompanying adult children to job interviews for college internships, attempting to be present during the interview (really: many Silly Valley companies, including mine when I was stuck in charge of an inter program, had plans in place to deal with this).
Re:Ill placed worries (Score:3, Interesting)
If age was a more significant factor than experience, wouldn't we have raised the driving age?
That would be too sensible for the USA to do. We should allow drinking alcohol at age 16/18 and driving at age 21.
The main obstacle to this more sane policy is the fact that those 16,17, and 18 year olds need a car to get to their job at the fast food place. Business trumps all other considerations, of course.
Re:Ill placed worries (Score:5, Interesting)
One problem with anecdotal evidence is that there is selection bias. For example, in a French high school I went to, there were two sisters, both very gifted, both had jumped two grades (which even in the French system is not always seen too kindly by school administrators).
One girl, the older one, was still completely immature, and could be very obnoxious at times. She was filled with false modesty. Every time she had an imperfect grade, even if it was still the best grade in the class, she had to complain loudly about it. She was complaining, but it was obvious to the rest of us, she was just gloating, and also she loved complaining (we could see she derived lots of satisfaction from that personality trait).
The younger sister, one year younger and so just one grade below on the other hand, was actually pretty cool by comparison. The younger sister didn't brag about her grades, had plenty of friends, didn't stay isolated away at the school library for every lunch/recess, and later I actually found out she was actually much more gifted academically than her older sister. And I think I only found out by fluke really, a teacher told me, and then I confirmed the story with others.
But if you were to have taken an informal poll about gifted kids at my school, I'm pretty sure almost everyone would mention/recall the older sister -- the obnoxious one. Very few people would have actually even known about the younger sister. And that's the thing, the success stories, and the more well-adjusted precocious students are virtually invisible compared to the precocious kids that are obnoxious and totally immature. That's why, we shouldn't go by anecdotal evidence alone, if we're really interested in improving the US educational system. The anecdotal evidence only tells us the story of the outliers, not the results of the core system itself.
Re:Why go to community college? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ill placed worries (Score:3, Interesting)
The 35 thing is an oft repeated but inaccurate statement.
In fact, people back then lived to 70 or 80 all the time. There's a reason four score was the lifespan of a man.
What dragged down the average incredibly was infant mortality which was very very high, which kinda compensated for low availability of contraceptives.
Basically if you eliminate the under 5 year olds, people might die early of a number of misadventures, but still managed to approach modern lifespans.