[Vision2020] One Way to Save the State Lots and Lots of Money

[Kenneth Marcy]

On Wednesday 17 February 2010 17:52:36 Wayne Price wrote:
> While I understand the initial knee-jerk reaction is that this is
> bad, maybe it's not.

Absent any studies showing the change is educationally beneficial, why 
jump to the conclusion that it is?

> The high flyers in the 11th grade wouldn't be held back,

In some worlds, this may be true. In Rowling's wizarding world, the 
Weasley brothers left school early for entrepreneurial success, which 
they had been planning for years. Harry, Ron, and Hermione left early 
because they had an evil dark lord to battle, who, by the way, 
destroyed their school in the process of trying to destroy their 
future abilities to control or destroy him.

> and the less than sharp students would require extra work, which    
> will spawn jobs as tutors and "crammers" as utilized in the UK,    
> creating a cottge industry.

Oh, right. Instead of dunces doing detention for missing or inadequate 
homework efforts, under the new regime they'll be sent down Knockturn 
Alley to Craven & Crumbles, crammers for cash, to get a university 
admissions qualification.

> The over all tax payers will save money, and while there will be
> fewer students in our high schools, they will be better students.

On what evidence do you suggest that the students who stay in school 
the longest, the 12th graders, are worse students than the students 
younger than them who remain? All 12th graders will be out their last 
year of school, not just the less adept ones.

> The parents of those that are less than brilliant, will hire tutors 
> for those that the system leaves behind, and those students will   
> make excellent students if they get accepted into colleges.

This reads as an educational entrepreneur's pipe dream, or an attempt 
at entertainment sleight-of-hand.

> And this way, while the "state" is providing a basic level of
> education, the parents and or students that wish to take advantage  
> of additional tutoring  will bear the cost rather than the public.

Nonsense. Just more evidence that the USA is succumbing to its own 
increasingly less desireable characteristics toward a darker age.


Ken