7 ms·

In Utah, a plan to cut 12th grade -- altogether

18 points by robg 17y ago

dsplittgerber 17y ago
Instead of cutting public employees numbers, their salaries or pension plans, they're focusing on cutting the actual benefits the state provides for its people. Say hello to the inherent incentive structure of government.
- hga 17y ago
  Maybe ... in this case the current proposal on the table is to make it optional. For a significant subset of students, the ones who the school system is essentially warehousing, that strikes me as OK. After all, a high school degree nowadays is essentially worthless, a basic college degree has replaced it. There's the danger of the slippery slope, of course.
  - dsplittgerber 17y ago
    The danger of arguing about these proposals - they may very well be worthy of separate appraisal - is that one accepts the basic principle that in times of receding tax revenues it's ok to cut benefits for the taxpayers but not to downsize the actual legislature or governing body with its employees as well. It's a perfect smoke screen on the part of the legislature.
    - hga 17y ago
      Hmmm, maybe you shouldn't try to couple the two? I.e. accept "benefits" cuts in times of "receding tax revenues" (never let a crisis got to waste :-) and on a separate tack work on the much harder problem you and everyone else who's sane is worried about. Although ... my narrowly divided purple state of Missouri is not having serious problems with public sector employees, and how much do you want to bet that Utah is having even less?
    - euroclydon 17y ago
      I was doing some work for the Office of the Speaker of the House in California, which is huge and employees hundreds of people. They are paid by the state. A guy there told me that when the is a gov. shutdown, they get IOUs for months. Plus they do get laid off also.
      - hga 17y ago
        Do some searching and you'll find that California is one of the worst examples of the capture of a state government by public sector unions ... worse at least in that it's probably closest to the brink financially (New York at least has the excuse of the collapse of the financial sector). However legislatures tend to be a special case, e.g. the employees of the Congress are not covered by all the employment laws that are enforced by the Executive.
      - dsplittgerber 17y ago
        "According to a 2007 analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics by the Asbury Park Press, “the average federal worker made $59,864 in 2005, compared with the average salary of $40,505 in the private sector.” Across comparable jobs, the federal government paid higher salaries than the private sector three times out of four, the paper found." There is an eye-opening story in Reason magazine on how public servants have it much better than private sector workers: http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/12/class-war http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/12/class-war
  - Jach 17y ago
    The proposal is essentially worthless, though. The entirety of high school (not just 12th grade) is already optional: just take the GED. And it's not very hard if you're determined enough to graduate in 11th grade with a full diploma. (I would have done that if AP classes hadn't interested me.)
    - hga 17y ago
      Yeah ... but federal and generally state money is tied to attendance, so perhaps the state needs to step in like this and make it formal? And in my state of Missouri in 1979 to get my diploma I had to take 12th grade (which due to bad or mediocre teachers was almost entirely a waste of time: it's a bad sign when you're taking English Lit, Physics, Trig and Calculus, etc. and your 2nd year of JROTC is by far the best, most interesting and most useful class).
  - stan_rogers 17y ago
    The "slippery slope" in my neck of the woods was the elimination of Grade 13. Yes, we had one of those here in Ontario, Canada -- and it was a university (as opposed to college) prep year. I never finished it (I was too cool for school at the time, and Grade 13 was just a brief return visit after a period of serious professional "truancy"), but my course of studies consisted of three sciences (physics, biology and chemistry) and four maths ("abstract algebra", "functions, relations and matrices", calculus, and statistics). Admittedly, first-year university studies in the province were hell for people coming from outside of Ontario (or for anybody who loaded their schedules with courses that didn't fit their university program).
    - hga 17y ago
      Was it ever non-optional? I.e. what was the slide down the slope from A to B?
      - stan_rogers 17y ago
        It was non-optional if you wished to attend university. Grade 12 would get you into community college, but without it you needed to wait long enough after graduation to qualify as a mature student. And no, a GED would not do.
jbellis 17y ago
In the Philippines, completing high school means you've done a total of 10 years. I don't know of a good way to compare high school outcomes per se, but RP college grads who go on US grad schools certainly seem to do okay.
georgecmu 17y ago
I went to high school in the States and a decision to graduate a year early was one of the best ones I've made. There's no reason not to teach half of the stuff that's covered in high school to middle schoolers. It was rather ridiculous to see 9th-10th graders open algebra and geometry textbooks for the first time. Incidentally, there's no 12th grade in Russia and in most of the former Soviet Union countries. There were only 10 grades until 1987-88 or so.
- illumin8 17y ago
  Agreed, I did concurrent enrollment and by the age of 16 was taking half a day of University courses and half a day of secondary courses. However, this is quite a bit different. Will any out of state University seriously consider a college application without 12 grades of experience? This is tremendously short-sighted. There are some rabid conservative Republicans that believe all public education should be removed and replaced with private education. This is just taking advantage of a budget shortfall to accelerate that process. Would you trust private corporations to school your children? I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong...
  - georgecmu 17y ago
    > Will any out of state University seriously consider a > college application without 12 grades of experience? I only have anecdotal evidence that they would ;) I had 9 grades of experience total (skipped first two grades as well), didn't have stellar SAT scores or high school grades, did a half-ass job on the applications, and yet I got about 40% acceptance rate at pretty good schools. I got rejections from Harvard, MIT and Caltech, but I doubt my age or lack of experience was the main factor in their decision. A friend of mine from the same high school did pretty much the same thing a year later and was told by MIT (or was it Caltech?) that they're not accepting him only because he's graduating early. He ended up going to the same university as me. > Would you trust private corporations to school your > children? I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong... Private schools are pretty popular in this country.
  - yummyfajitas 17y ago
    Will any out of state University seriously consider a college application without 12 grades of experience? If an entire state does this, I doubt very many universities would categorically reject applicants from that state. Perhaps the real problem is universities (and others) counting years in school rather than education delivered. The output is hard to measure (and besides, everyone complains about tests), so lets focus exclusively on the input?
patrickgzill 17y ago
I recall a millionaire couple (older folks, maybe 55-60) I knew when I was a kid - they built and operated nursing homes; I recall very clearly them with an architect's ruler going over the blueprints for a new building. They worked on a farm, and were themselves the son and daughter of farmers going back many generations. Education level? 8th grade education.
jff 17y ago
As long as BYU is on board, Utah can probably just go ahead and pass the bill.

18 points by robg 17y ago

Instead of cutting public employees numbers, their salaries or pension plans, they're focusing on cutting the actual benefits the state provides for its people. Say hello to the inherent incentive structure of government.

hga 17y ago
Maybe ... in this case the current proposal on the table is to make it optional. For a significant subset of students, the ones who the school system is essentially warehousing, that strikes me as OK. After all, a high school degree nowadays is essentially worthless, a basic college degree has replaced it. There's the danger of the slippery slope, of course.
- dsplittgerber 17y ago
  The danger of arguing about these proposals - they may very well be worthy of separate appraisal - is that one accepts the basic principle that in times of receding tax revenues it's ok to cut benefits for the taxpayers but not to downsize the actual legislature or governing body with its employees as well. It's a perfect smoke screen on the part of the legislature.
  - hga 17y ago
    Hmmm, maybe you shouldn't try to couple the two? I.e. accept "benefits" cuts in times of "receding tax revenues" (never let a crisis got to waste :-) and on a separate tack work on the much harder problem you and everyone else who's sane is worried about. Although ... my narrowly divided purple state of Missouri is not having serious problems with public sector employees, and how much do you want to bet that Utah is having even less?
  - euroclydon 17y ago
    I was doing some work for the Office of the Speaker of the House in California, which is huge and employees hundreds of people. They are paid by the state. A guy there told me that when the is a gov. shutdown, they get IOUs for months. Plus they do get laid off also.
    - hga 17y ago
      Do some searching and you'll find that California is one of the worst examples of the capture of a state government by public sector unions ... worse at least in that it's probably closest to the brink financially (New York at least has the excuse of the collapse of the financial sector). However legislatures tend to be a special case, e.g. the employees of the Congress are not covered by all the employment laws that are enforced by the Executive.
    - dsplittgerber 17y ago
      "According to a 2007 analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics by the Asbury Park Press, “the average federal worker made $59,864 in 2005, compared with the average salary of $40,505 in the private sector.” Across comparable jobs, the federal government paid higher salaries than the private sector three times out of four, the paper found." There is an eye-opening story in Reason magazine on how public servants have it much better than private sector workers: http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/12/class-war http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/12/class-war
- Jach 17y ago
  The proposal is essentially worthless, though. The entirety of high school (not just 12th grade) is already optional: just take the GED. And it's not very hard if you're determined enough to graduate in 11th grade with a full diploma. (I would have done that if AP classes hadn't interested me.)
  - hga 17y ago
    Yeah ... but federal and generally state money is tied to attendance, so perhaps the state needs to step in like this and make it formal? And in my state of Missouri in 1979 to get my diploma I had to take 12th grade (which due to bad or mediocre teachers was almost entirely a waste of time: it's a bad sign when you're taking English Lit, Physics, Trig and Calculus, etc. and your 2nd year of JROTC is by far the best, most interesting and most useful class).
- stan_rogers 17y ago
  The "slippery slope" in my neck of the woods was the elimination of Grade 13. Yes, we had one of those here in Ontario, Canada -- and it was a university (as opposed to college) prep year. I never finished it (I was too cool for school at the time, and Grade 13 was just a brief return visit after a period of serious professional "truancy"), but my course of studies consisted of three sciences (physics, biology and chemistry) and four maths ("abstract algebra", "functions, relations and matrices", calculus, and statistics). Admittedly, first-year university studies in the province were hell for people coming from outside of Ontario (or for anybody who loaded their schedules with courses that didn't fit their university program).
  - hga 17y ago
    Was it ever non-optional? I.e. what was the slide down the slope from A to B?
    - stan_rogers 17y ago
      It was non-optional if you wished to attend university. Grade 12 would get you into community college, but without it you needed to wait long enough after graduation to qualify as a mature student. And no, a GED would not do.

jbellis 17y ago

In the Philippines, completing high school means you've done a total of 10 years. I don't know of a good way to compare high school outcomes per se, but RP college grads who go on US grad schools certainly seem to do okay.

georgecmu 17y ago

I went to high school in the States and a decision to graduate a year early was one of the best ones I've made. There's no reason not to teach half of the stuff that's covered in high school to middle schoolers. It was rather ridiculous to see 9th-10th graders open algebra and geometry textbooks for the first time. Incidentally, there's no 12th grade in Russia and in most of the former Soviet Union countries. There were only 10 grades until 1987-88 or so.

illumin8 17y ago
Agreed, I did concurrent enrollment and by the age of 16 was taking half a day of University courses and half a day of secondary courses. However, this is quite a bit different. Will any out of state University seriously consider a college application without 12 grades of experience? This is tremendously short-sighted. There are some rabid conservative Republicans that believe all public education should be removed and replaced with private education. This is just taking advantage of a budget shortfall to accelerate that process. Would you trust private corporations to school your children? I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong...
- georgecmu 17y ago
  > Will any out of state University seriously consider a > college application without 12 grades of experience? I only have anecdotal evidence that they would ;) I had 9 grades of experience total (skipped first two grades as well), didn't have stellar SAT scores or high school grades, did a half-ass job on the applications, and yet I got about 40% acceptance rate at pretty good schools. I got rejections from Harvard, MIT and Caltech, but I doubt my age or lack of experience was the main factor in their decision. A friend of mine from the same high school did pretty much the same thing a year later and was told by MIT (or was it Caltech?) that they're not accepting him only because he's graduating early. He ended up going to the same university as me. > Would you trust private corporations to school your > children? I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong... Private schools are pretty popular in this country.
- yummyfajitas 17y ago
  Will any out of state University seriously consider a college application without 12 grades of experience? If an entire state does this, I doubt very many universities would categorically reject applicants from that state. Perhaps the real problem is universities (and others) counting years in school rather than education delivered. The output is hard to measure (and besides, everyone complains about tests), so lets focus exclusively on the input?

patrickgzill 17y ago

I recall a millionaire couple (older folks, maybe 55-60) I knew when I was a kid - they built and operated nursing homes; I recall very clearly them with an architect's ruler going over the blueprints for a new building. They worked on a farm, and were themselves the son and daughter of farmers going back many generations. Education level? 8th grade education.

jff 17y ago

As long as BYU is on board, Utah can probably just go ahead and pass the bill.