Posted on 10/24/2026 4:38:49 AM PDT by DFG
A genius New York teen was denied the opportunity to graduate high school early and earn his diploma to attend his dream college due to his age — despite being a full-time community college student.
Michael Sweeney, a 14-year-old homeschooler, is on the verge of applying to Arizona State University to study mechanical engineering, but his dreams were dashed when Bethlehem Central School District denied his request to enter his senior year, the Times Union reported.
The teen, who turns 15 in December, tried multiple times to get approval to graduate early but school officials claimed his homeschool plan didn’t meet the requirements needed for the credits.
Sweeney has outpaced all of his courses offered to him and is currently taking advanced classes, including Calculus III and Physics II at the local college where he’s been enrolled full-time for the last two years.
“He’s moving on to 12th grade,” his mother Nicole Sweeney told the outlet. “He’s testing out of every high school category at this point.”
He is bound by New York State’s compulsory education law that requires all kids between 6 and 16 to attend full-time instruction, meaning Sweeney would have to wait until the 2027-2028 school year to graduate.
The brilliant youngster has taken the California Achievement Test, a standardized exam common among homeschool students to ensure they are learning and not being left behind.
The CAT scores determine the grade level the students are equal to.
Sweeney scored a 13.5 equaling him to a sophomore in college, confirming his grade level is beyond that of a being a high schooler.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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Age has nothing to do with academic achievement. If the young person meets the standards to graduate, let ‘em graduate and move on to bigger things.
Merit beats policy.
According to the CAT, in second grade my reading level was that of a high school senior. Didn't do me any good though. I still went through all the grades. When I transferred to middle school in seventh grade I was sooo BORED with English class, all the kids around me were several grades behind where I was.
Back to this young man. The school system is wrong to deny him early graduation. They're holding him back for the sole purpose of keeping him and other homeschool students from making their quality of education look (which, it likely is).
Our schools cater to the lowest common denominator, without recognizing real talent and achievement. This young lad should be excelling, not suffering.
The school system has a huge financial incentive to keep kids in school. The system gets paid by the Feds for every day the kid is in school. A couple of decades ago that pay was about $2500 per day. I have no idea what it is now. That pay keeps them from letting kids out early. Academic achievement doesn’t figure into the equation.
No way this would happen to a genius black kid who wanted to go to college at a young age. That kid would be on the cover of Time magazine and be declared a national hero.
Eh, adapt and overcome. Not worth the fight. He can still take college courses, test out and graduate from college early. The smart students learn to work around the idiotic policies. Public school systems are designed for retards and shouldn’t be involved with certifying homeschooled kids.
Nothing but Democrat mean spirited Ness and jealousy.
And there is an age requirement associated with the GED, the earliest one can take it is 16 (if you’re lucky). I’m thinking of moving OCONUS after my daughter finishes her sophomore year and want to ensure she essentially gets a HS diploma.
That’s right. Can’t have someone finding their dream if it can be stopped. Human behavior really pisses me off sometimes.
>>Eh, adapt and overcome. Not worth the fight.
Many colleges have early admissions programs, there’s even one that’s ALL early admissions. The kid could simply drop out of high school and go straight to college.
He should just enroll at Arizona State anyway. As long as he's taking more than 12 hours or whatever the number is, that would be full-time instruction.
BS bureaucracy and entitlement mentality of teachers/teachers unions cannot allow that kind of precedent to occur. On the other hand, just put a stack of the final exams for every course required for HS graduates. If the kid is as sh!t-hot as the claim then he’ll legit graduate in one afternoon.
“The system gets paid by the Feds for every day the kid is in school.”
Per the article, he’s homeschooled. To me, it seems like the Hochul bunch are persecuting homeschooling families
My three nephews were/are homeschooled in NYS. They outscored the in-school kids, but I thought my SIL said the oldest got his diploma early — but probably not before he was 16 now that I think about it.
School officials claimed his homeschool plan didn’t meet the requirements needed for the credits.
So they don’t have a test to see who can graduate high school.?
Yeah, the article is implying that he can’t get into college without a HS diploma—nope. He can figure out a way to get what he wants. It might be unconventional but will work just the same. I’ve had to deal with similar situations.
There is always a college or university out there who will be happy to take your $$$.
Academic achievement should come first, I’d think. We could have the makings of a genius here.
Let him take a GED and move on. It’s not like he’s walking with his peers.
Just like Child Protective Services is a business. The states get reimbursed up to 83% of their costs, and the state does everything it can to screw foster parents to keep most of the money themselves. They use every technicality and mis-interpretation of law to their advantage.
Ask me how I know.
My son, even tbou at age 17, over achieved in high school and early college dual enrollment. So much so that when he left, they further crippled the hurdles so noone else every could do the same. Pasco county Florida
He is a professor making 6 digits today.
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