Utah State Senator Proposes Making 12th Grade Optional 15
State Sen. Chris Buttars has a great idea to cut Utah's $700 million deficit, make senior year optional. The senator told the Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee that many students just waste time during their senior year and that getting rid of it would save $102 million. "You're spending a whole lot of money for a whole bunch of kids who aren't getting anything out of that grade," he said. "It comes down to the best use of money."
Bad approach with interesting logic (Score:2)
Honestly, he's got a certain amount of merit behind his arguments. Students in the 12th grade often suffer from senioritis and gain nothing from their experience.
To just make the senior year completely optional, though, is absurd to me. Give them a real reason to be there. Give them classes that will actually help them out. I'd keep arguing that they should invest in their future and reap the rewards, but, unfortunately I think we've reached an age where there's perverse incentive for many states to keep th
Re: (Score:1)
Really because my daughter is a senior this year and taking all Advanced AP Courses that count as College credit for most of the colleges in our area. As for the work for education both Norway and Germany have great systems Military or Community service for a year or 2 ( forget which) but that covers the cost of college
Re: (Score:2)
First, note the word "often." I'm definitely not saying that every single student in their senior year is lazy, but there are definitely enough that my statement is still true.
I also took AP classes in high school. The first half of my day I spent in AP US History, AP Calculus, and AP English Lit. Then, after lunch, I skipped the rest of my classes and went home. It was a joke. I'm quite certain that I would have benefited far more from a year in college in which would have gained 25 credits towards graduat
Re: (Score:1)
Senioritis is caused by senior year grades not being seen by colleges students apply to. Skipping senior year and applying to college junior year would lead to junioritis. A wise idea would be to replace the normal classes seniors take with classes that can only be taken as a senior, classes that are interesting and apply to real life, such as those mysteriously vanishing civics classes. This measure would be doomed to fail anywhere that education is considered important, and where politicians use 'improvin
Re: (Score:1)
If they want to cut down on 4 years in HS cost (which is silly in its own right) talk about condensing the curriculum into 3 years instead of just cutting that last year of much needed school out.
It's also not consistent with its own logic... (Score:2)
They could probably make any grade after the 2nd optional, really... ...you don't really need much more than very basic addition/subtraction skills and very limited literacy to utter 'You want fries with that?'...
All the rest of the education is simply wasted on kids who end up working for fast food joints or similarly low-skilled employment...
Just imagine how much money it would save the education board, and picture how much less fast food joints could pay their even younger 'operators'.
Seriously, it's an
Re: (Score:2)
Students in the 12th grade often suffer from senioritis and gain nothing from their experience.
So if we make the senior year optional, those students who decide early on that they are going to opt out just have "junioritis" instead. The key is people giving up on school. I agree with the rest of your post, we need to make school interesting and compelling all the way through the educational process. But there really is no logic in dropping a year simply to avoid last-year apathy, because the apathy will simply move to whatever the last year is for those students who have given up.
I heard on NPR th
Quite an arbitrary threshold. (Score:1)
Senior year is no less beneficial than the years before it.
In fact, education has exponential rewards as a function of time invested. I'm a 4th year graduate student and without a doubt, I have learned more in each year than I learned in the year before it, going back as far as I can remember. This is because I don't just learn facts -- I learn how to learn faster. On top of that, I learn a lot of facts as well...and on top of that, the more facts you know, the more you can put new facts into perspective
We eliminated grade 12 decades ago. (Score:2)
You either take a 2-year pre-university series (and university is shaved from 4 years to 3), or you take a 3-year technical program, such as nursing, etc., that leads directly to the job market.
The idea was that 30% of students would be in the pre-uni stream and 70% would be in the jobs stream. It worked out the exact opposite - 70% take pre-uni.
Since college is both free and optional, only those who want to be there go, so it cu
Then, juniorithsis! (Score:2)
Then, students will slack off in their junior year. Why not just graduate when finish all requirements? :P