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Since most college freshmen are literate at the 8th grade level, MAX!, letting them go to college after 10th grade seems logical.
They can start their remedial courses 2 years early!
High Schools to Offer Plan to Graduate 2 Years Early
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.
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.
The program is being organized by the National Center on Education and the Economy, and its goals include insuring that students have mastered a set of basic requirements and reducing the numbers of high school graduates who need remedial courses when they enroll in college. More than a million college freshmen across America must take remedial courses each year, and many drop out before getting a degree.
“That’s a central problem we’re trying to address, the enormous failure rate of these kids when they go to the open admission colleges,” said Marc S. Tucker, president of the center, a Washington-based nonprofit. “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.”
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has provided a $1.5 million planning grant to help the national center work with states and districts to get the program running, Mr. Tucker said. He estimated that start-up costs for school districts would be about $500 a student, to buy courses and tests and to train teachers.
To defray those costs, the eight states intend to apply for some of the $350 million in federal stimulus money designated for improving public school testing, Mr. Tucker said.
High school students will begin the new coursework in the fall of 2011 in Connecticut, Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont. The education commissioners of those states have pledged to sign up 10 to 20 schools each for the pilot project, and have begun to reach out to district superintendents.
The project’s backers hope it will eventually spread to all schools in those states, and inspire other states to follow suit. Supporters include the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union.
Kentucky’s commissioner of education, Terry Holliday, said high school graduation requirements there had long been based on having students ac ulate enough course credits to graduate.
“This would reform that,” Dr. Holliday said. “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.”
The new system aims to provide students with a clear outline of what they need to study to succeed, said Phil Daro, a consultant based in Berkeley, Calif., who is a member of an advisory committee for the effort.
School systems like Singapore’s promise students that if they diligently study the material in their course syllabuses, they will do well on their examinations, Mr. Daro said. “In the U.S., by contrast, all is murky,” he said. “Students do not have a clear idea of where to apply their effort, and the system makes no coherent attempt to reward learning.”
Its backers say the new system would reduce the need for community colleges to offer remedial courses because the passing score for the 10th-grade tests would be set at the level necessary to succeed in first-year college courses. Failure would provide 10th graders with an early warning system about the knowledge and skills they need to master in high school before seeking to enroll in college.
Currently, many high school graduates enrolling in community colleges are stunned to find that they cannot pass the math and English exams those colleges use to determine who need remediation.
Four years ago, a bipartisan panel of national education and other policy experts, assembled by the national center, recommended a far-reaching redesign of the American educational system, including the adoption of board examinations in high schools.
Other recommendations of the 2006 panel included giving states, rather than local districts, control over school financing, and starting school for most children at age 3. Mr. Tucker said the board examination project was the broadest effort at putting the panel’s proposals into effect so far.
“One hope is that this board exam system can prepare students to move on to careers, to higher ed and technical colleges and the workplace, sooner rather than later,” said Howard T. Everson, a professor of educational psychology at the City University of New York, who is co-chairman of the advisory committee.
In that respect, the effort is similar to the growing early college high school movement, in which students begin taking college-level courses while they are still in high school and earning college credit through nearby community colleges.
States that participate in the pilot project on board examinations will pick up to five programs of instruction, with their accompanying tests, for use by the participating high schools. Those programs already approved by the national center include the College Board’s Advanced Placement, the International Baccalaureate Diploma, ACT’s QualityCore and the International General Certificate of Secondary Education programs offered both by Cambridge International and by Edexcel, part of Pearson Education.
Since most college freshmen are literate at the 8th grade level, MAX!, letting them go to college after 10th grade seems logical.
They can start their remedial courses 2 years early!
Ok, I laughed at this. That aside, I think that this is an interesting idea and would like to see what results they have as the data trickles in.Since most college freshmen are literate at the 8th grade level, MAX!, letting them go to college after 10th grade seems logical.
They can start their remedial courses 2 years early!
Good. Give kids an incentive to master the curriculum more quickly. It can't hurt.
I'm mixed about this. It is almost required already to have a couple years of Community College to get the same education as High School of the 60's.
Why do we want to continue belittling the education system? If anything, stop graduating High School students with an 8th grade education, and make them achieve a real 12th grade education.
We can't do that. Somebody's feelings might get hurt.
Sad, but true.
I wonder if the left has a clue as to how much Political Correctness damages us as a nation?
i'm a little mixed about this too.
its good to encourage them to push harder. but alot of what really helps in college can't be taught. study habits, social skills, independence and maturity, etc. i think i would have had a better gpa in college if i had stayed in hs for my fourth year instead of leave early. somethings only life can teach
well I think it would be great as long as community college is REQUIRED afterwards. The article seemed to allude to this, but it was too vague to tell for sure and would not argue with someone who came up with the opposite opinion. Community Colleges can/do teach vocational programs as well as academic associate programs. This way, those who don't have a desire to go on to University can learn a trade/skill which they can later ply. Those who want to go to University can go for their associates and move forward. Those who want to go to "selective universities" can finish HS and move forward after that.
You can't require that free people go to college, Drachen, but at least the candidates would be demonstrably a little better suited for it (based on their accelerated mastery of curriculum) should they ever choose to go to college.
The timing of advanced studies is also a matter of personal discretion, imo.
State offers to end daycare services two years early.
[QUOTE=Winehole23;4093744]You can't require that free people go to college, Drachen, but at least the candidates would be demonstrably a little better suited for it (based on their accelerated mastery of curriculum) should they ever choose to go to college.
QUOTE]
Unless you can. They are required to go to high school (up to 17 anyway).
Yay. For realz.
That said, I'm all in favor of making the whole curriculum harder, like you suggested upstream, Drachen.True, but perhaps this requirement is worthy to be waived as well, upon approved completion of high school equivalency.
Last edited by Winehole23; 02-18-2010 at 03:08 PM.
I can definitely see the appeal of mandatory college attendance for early finishers, but weigh personally in favor of freedom, even before the age of legal majority. Let's stop using schools to keep young people off the street.
And make them real places of learning.
Exactly my point. The college would be a real place of learning because they would have the option of getting an AA, an AS, or an HVAC, etc whichever suits them. I hate to say this because I believe a well rounded (read: all subjects) education should be strived for by all (I hate people who say, "why do I need humanities for my business degree), but unfortunately a great majority of people don't feel the same way I do, and it is a losing battle which costs a lot of time, and money. I also think it shows a lack of ambition, but I won't get into that in this post. So give them directed career-path based education and be in done with it.
Oh, and it would turn high school (at least in the 11th and 12th grade) into real places of learning for those who have the ambition to get a well rounded education to open as many doors as possible to them by removing those that don't.
Not a bad kernel, if reliably imparted.
Sure. Why not?
My only caveat is that the "battery of tests" must be sufficiently hard. This way anyone wanting to take this path has to study hard if they want to do this. This way it improves the general basic literacy of the country. Also, if they go this route, allow maybe 1 elective class in the second year. Science, Math, English/Reading/Writing. That is all for the rest of the classes.
As far as the reliably imparted thing, the CCs just need to keep doing what they are doing. For all the jokes that go around, SAC is really a pretty good JC (no I have no affiliation, nor have I ever gone there).
Community college tuition is still within reach for a lot of people.
Last edited by Winehole23; 02-18-2010 at 03:10 PM.
It all depends on the curriculum.
My oldest is in 10th grade; already got a handle on Trig and Statistics; been introduced to Calc; has written more significant papers (for high school 8+ pages) than I did my entire career; has a strenuous AP history course; and a pretty rigorous Chemistry course w/lab. I've discovered now that I'm witnessing it, that much of what is conventional wisdom about education in this country is actually hyperbole.
Didn't believe it would be so, but it is.
Also should be pointed out that we live in a small town in Western PA - not some affluent suburb or anything like that; middle of the road socio-economically.
Sounds nice. Do you like it there, 101A?
And this would be a great way to inflate their pool of students and thus inflate their tuition just like the universities.
Yeah, the AP classes are tough. What WC says is probably true for the classes designed for the majorities, but AP classes moved very quickly and covered lots of ground when I took them years ago. The AP classes are pretty much the only thing our educational system is getting right at present.
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