[mattnguyen]

My older sibling and I both grew up in a single-parent household. Since we were tight on money, my sister decided to go to community college after high school in part to look after me while our parent worked. After two years, my sibling transferred with a full ride to a good university.

Looking to my sibling's experience, I decided to leave high school when I turned 16 to attend community college and accrue transfer credits. 2.5 years later, I transferred to a good university and graduated earlier than my high school peers, saving tens of thousands of dollars. I had a blast during this time, as it really helped shape my most formative years of development, especially being exposed to so many diverse groups (as you would expect at a community college).

Now my other younger family members are looking to my experiences and deciding for themselves if the last two years of high school or first two years of university education are important to them. Now they are taking the community college route to save money, and they seem to understand that they can still derive meaningful experiences and relationships.

[maxerickson]

Having a year (or more) of college credits upon high school graduation should be one of the education tracks available to every student.

It's a massive failure of imagination that this isn't already the case.

[gscott]

The local 2 year college nearby created a Charter High School for grades 11-12 where there High School students take college classes to count for both college and high school. It was good for my son who graduated a few years ago. More 2 year colleges might have similar programs I am not sure http://middlecollege.guhsd.net/

[akhilcacharya]

I did that in high school instead of going to my state's elite public boarding school and transferred 66 credits into my state school. In retrospect it was a huge mistake, my outcomes since pale in comparison to the folks that graduated from the elite school (though it's possible the same would have happened).

[wil421]

Why should you have to get credits before you leave High School? Just teach more advanced subjects in both High School and College.

I agree with what you are saying but I think it’s a product of a failure somewhere else in the education system. No child left behind and other programs hinder education by applying one size fits all policies.

[maxerickson]

I didn't say that. I said it should be available to every student, which is not the case.

It's directly a failure of the primary education system, but it is more a failure of leadership and resources than anything else.

As far as NCLB, the response to it is a bigger problem than the law. There's nothing in it stopping states from investing in both helping underachieving students and in helping other students get ahead. NCLB didn't tell Oklahoma to slash taxes and burn their schools.

[skookumchuck]

> a failure of leadership and resources

Why is it more expensive to teach, say, calculus than algebra? Offering more advanced classes should not cost more.

[thoth]

Well, the more difficult/specialized the subject, the fewer available teachers. Plus, someone that knows calculus well enough to teach it likely has other job prospects (competitive pay).

[skookumchuck]

I guess I'm the opposite, you'd have to pay me extra to induce me to teach the more basic material.

[chrisseaton]

> Why is it more expensive to teach, say, calculus than algebra?

Because educating someone to teach more advanced subjects takes more times and resources.

[skookumchuck]

But the teachers have masters degrees.

Besides, teaching college freshman calculus is not exactly magneto hydrodynamics.

[ams6110]

High schools may have trouble finding teachers who are qualified to teach advanced subjects, also they may not have enough students to really justify a class at that level.

Whereas a Community College may have an easier time finding instructors, since there aren't licensing rules or a need to employ the instructor full-time. Also they draw from a wider student population so may not have as much difficulty filling a class.

[skookumchuck]

> High schools may have trouble finding teachers who are qualified to teach advanced subjects

One wonders about such teachers who have advanced masters degrees in education. Why are they not qualified to teach freshman college material?

[dragonwriter]

A Masters degree is usually qualification to teach college in the field of the degree (regular faculty in community colleges, lecturers in major universities—though lecturers are somewhat rare).

A masters in education is qualification to teach education classes, not other subjects.

[thoth]

Someone with a masters in education may or may not have the knowledge required for a particular subject, say a math or science. Or another way, just because someone has a masters in education doesn’t mean they can teach any specific class. Their background could be in counseling, administration, school psychology, or education methodology... not, for instance, typical high school subjects.

[skookumchuck]

A degree in anything but the subjects they teach? Does that mean that a high school physics teacher knows nothing more about physics than high school physics?

[Retric]

Students are not equally skilled. The majority of students are not really a collage level English and History and Math and Art class starting in 11th grade, though a significant number could take a subset of those.

Simply making High School arbitrarily harder is kind of meaningless if most students would fail the material.

[gowld]

Only the best art students are ready for collage level Art classes in 11th grade.

[phamilton]

This sort of leads into competency based advancement rather than time based advancement. Rather than having a 4 year program where you rank graduates by competency (gpa), have a higher bar of competency and have people graduate at different rates.

[maxerickson]

That's part of what I'm getting at when I talk about it being an available track.

You can still have everybody lined up to finish ~17 or 18, just allow more variation in what they have finished. If someone doesn't plan to go on to college, maybe they don't need to take college prep math classes and can take classes that will serve them better.

[throwawayjava]

> Just teach more advanced subjects in both High School

Many affluent high schools have an abundance of AP/IB courses. Many high schools also have additional college-credit courses (where the high school acts as a sort of proxy for a local college, often a community college). At a "good" high school, students can combine all of these options to have not just a year, but even junior or senior standing by the time they start college.

There are three problems with this approach:

1. Not all high schools are affluent / have their crap together enough to offer these options.

2. students need to be prepared. Enough of them that you can fill a course. This can be a barrier in less affluent areas.

3. Students have to know about this option, usually starting in middle school so that they can begin working ahead early (e.g., finish algebra in middle school).

> ...and college

The pattern here seems to be picking the college vs. picking the more advanced courses at the college. So, you don't take "more advanced couses at regional State campus"; instead, you go to (your field's equivalent of) MIT/Stanford/Berkeley/CMU. Or at least the state flagship. C.f., algorithms at an elite university vs. algorithms at the branch campus of a middling state system. The differences in both depth (rigor) and bredth are, in many cases, quite extraordinary.

> No child left behind and other programs hinder education by applying one size fits all policies.

Do you have any data to justify this assertion? AP offerings have increased since NCLB was enacted.

I don't disagree with you that NCLB is a net harm, but I don't think it's accurate to place the blame there for this particular problem. (Also, whenever NCLB comes up, it's worth pointing out that states bear a lot of responsibility -- they have quite a bit of leeway in how NCLB is implemented.)

[arca_vorago]

You shouldn't have to, but it should be offered for multiple reasons. It eases the hs college transition, it gets you a head start on prereqs and credits, among other things.

I will be forever grateful that my high school encouraged this.

[gowld]

If the credits are standardized its easier to compare "advanced high school course" to "remedial college course"

[oculusthrift]

This is essentially what AP classes are, is it not. If you go to a decent high school and take a good amount of AP’s it will keep you busy and challenged.

[iopuy]

Of AP, IB and dual enrollment AP is by far the worst option. There is a cumulative test at the end of the year where if you do not score high enough you won't receive college credit where as IB and dual enrollment focus on the content of the course throughout the semester to.award credit (and sometimes a cumulative project). Aced your AP class but perform poorly on the test, no credit for you!!! Also the tests cost hundreds of dollars extra. You might ask what does "not scoring high enough entail"? The answer is it is arbitrary. The test is scored 1-5 with 5 being highest and schools pick a range of 3-5 to award credit.

[sudosteph]

Problem is IB comes with a whole host of other requirements that AP doesnt. My school required volunteer time, a yearly special project, and yearlong courses (instead of semester-long which made all non-IB courses harder to schedule) to enroll in IB courses. I even know 2 people who were forced out of IB as juniors after the school canceled Latin classes, because they wouldn't have time to take 3 credits of a new language. Both of those people say they were glad to switch to AP though, less stress and more flexibility. Passing the exams wasn't hard either. Also IIRC, IB absolutely did require a test score for credit, and it wasn't any easier than AP.

I also dropped out of IB, but in favor of a new program that let me take 2 online state college classes during the school day. So I got full college credit, great professors, and kept my schedule flexible. So agreed that dual enrollment is better if the option is available.

[Consultant32452]

One benefit of AP is that you can take the test even if you haven't taken the class. So if you're motivated and can travel to some place where the test is being offered, you can rock out a shit ton of credits.

[sudosteph]

I wish somebody would have told me that. I think our school district paid for students AP exams if they were enrolled in the class, so I didn't even know there was an option to pay on your own.

[Consultant32452]

In my brother's case the AP English teacher was horrible. So he dropped the class and paid out of pocket to take the exam. The AP teacher happened to be the proctor and she was pissed the day he showed up. Having activist parents makes a world of difference. shrug

[dhimes]

I think AP is slower- like 1/2 speed. But some high schools have partnerships with the CCs to get 1-1 college credit in high school.

[gowld]

AP is slower because high school students take 7 courses/semester and college students take 4. If you take 7 year-long AP courses, the full courseload is about the same. Also, colleges often have 1 and 2 semester versions of the same material, to suit varying student needs.

[bsder]

It's called Advanced Placement.

You can rack up quite a lot of credits with AP courses.

As an engineer, I wiped out all my English requirements (6 credits). I wiped out Chemistry (6 credits and a really annoying lab at 4 credits). And I wiped out my first Calc class (4 credits). I think I killed a foreign language requirement, too (probably 6 credits).

That's 30 credits--or, a full year.

The big problem was that I was feeding into engineering which really doesn't let you wipe a lot out--knocking off Chemistry was a big deal (I also had an AP History score which didn't do anything for me, for example). Generally, all your good science scores just let you switch to a "more researchy" track where you take "deeper theoretical" (read: a shitton more work) classes.

[epage]

I've seen this in some cities and love it. I unfortunately had a district that was targeted at the lowest common denominator. My high school would only consider accepting community college credits if you were in danger of not graduating. I was a dual-enrollment student (HS+CC) and took Calc 1-3 + DiffEq, Kinetics, E&M, and more while still taking the filler courses at my high school.