This is one of Gov. Mitch Daniels' education initiatives that hasn't gotten the attention and discussion it deserves:
When the Indiana legislature passed the budget at the end of April, it also launched Daniels' plan, which allows high school students who complete their core requirements by the end of their junior year to skip senior year and go straight to college.
Money the state would have spent on senior year will become scholarship money -- $6,000 to $8,000 for most students, depending on their school district.
It's an idea that divides educators. Some think senior year is too often ill-spent and not so necessary. But others think the answer is to strengthen, not abandon, senior year.
"Just because the 12th grade may not be fully utilized to its potential by many students doesn't necessarily mean it should be done away with," said Phillip Lovell of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington, D.C.-based education reform group. "It means it should be reconfigured to be more relevant."
I'm long out of high school, but I've been around them enough to know that in many schools senior year has become a busywork joke. But I think I'm more inclined to take the "reconfigure rather than abandon" view expressed above.
And it's not just about the schoolwork. There is an arc to becoming an adult that the high school education is an important part of. Students spend four years maturing from put-upon newbies to respected upperclassmen, which teaches them how to go through the same process in college, which prepares them for the work place, in which growing from rookie to a seasoned member of the team is an important skill. Somehow I think speeding up the process -- denying oneself the best year of revered status to become one of the youngest members of the next level of newbies -- can shortcircuit the learning curve.
And it sounds like a good idea to leave the decision up to students, but I have my doubts about that, too. Looking back from current wisdom, I might say that I would have elected to stay for the fourth year if given the choice. But back then, I likely would have jumped at the chance to escape early, and I don't think I would have been the better for it.
