I was not at all surprised to read Jana Hollingsworth’s story about a new wrinkle in funding college in today’s DNT. Students beginning in 9th grade can start accumulating financial breaks from their good grades and other school activities with a sort of Kick Starter for college tool.
Though I don’t admit being surprised I had never heard of this before. So I guess I was a little surprised especially by how many students are already taking advantage of this. It will be another five years before anyone in my family reaches 9th grade again so I’m forgiving myself for my ignorance.
This all ties in with an earlier story about how our students can get college credit while still in high school thus trimming those college credit costs later on. An old friend sent me a couple emails wincing at 1. how we were making kids grow up so fast and 2. expressing skepticism that high school teachers would be teaching college credit classes.
From her second email:
Surprised to hear that HS teachers taught college courses.
There seems to be much support to continue this, but maybe now is a good time to rethink the whole program.K-12 is free, guaranteed, mandated education. As it should be.
If those fortunate enough to be gifted to breeze through some (key here) disciplines, why not expand and take other, mind broadening courses? Explore some areas that will not be something the student wants to pay for in college?
Tutor others not doing so well?The 90’s of get there and get there fast (usually to start making money fast) are over.
New times, new programs?
For what its worth here’s my reply to her justifying my support for the program in the rural areas where kids can’t travel easily to urban college campuses to take the alternative PSEO route:
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To me knowledge is knowledge. Lincoln only had a little primary school learning. My son quit after high school and then decided four years later to attend LSC a very lowbrow school. It got him into UMD where he picked up a masters and now he’s in a Doctoral program at Washington U in St. Louis.
I don’t have much use for the meritocracy of an Ivy League and I don’t think a fast track through college is bad either. The accrediting agencies [and] the SATS are fussy gatekeepers. There is no guarantee that a college prof will be a good teacher any more than there is [proof] that a good high school teacher will only be able to teach at a secondary level.
My primary beef was that rural kids far away from urban colleges would have more limited means of saving on college tuition by earning credits prior to actually attending college. I simply linked it with the red/blue voting in the recent presidential election. [as one more example explaining why rural folks might have a chip on their shoulder]
Harry
