High School Equivalency Exam

World Wide Web Links | 1/6/05 | Kevin O'Malley

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I've been getting asked more and more about my position that high school is a waste of time and my recommendation for parents to give their children a choice to skip high school.

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My own homeschooled children were admitted to college at the ages of 13, 12, and 13. Two had B.S. degrees in math at the age of 18. The oldest of these two recently finished a masters in math at the age of 20.

Brigham Young University has an excellent high school courses that are fully accredited, but the university does not award a diploma. My grand daughter is using it now.

My own children had to be certified as gifted and talented prior before our community college would admit them. This meant that I had to pay $400 each to have a psychologist administer an intelligence test. I took the results to the government school, which then arranged to have the children admitted to the college.

My children did fine, but please remember, that until about age 16 they had little to do with the social life at either the community college or the universities and colleges they later attended.

By the way, the oldest is a highly ranked athlete. He chose to study accounting since it meshed better with his heavy travel and training schedule. He also took off two years to complete a church mission at the age of 19. ( Returned home fluent in Russian) Despite all of this, he will finish his B.S. in accounting at the same age as his contemporaries.

[Kevmo]

I was going to post your example on this thread, but I see you beat me to it.

Interesting discussion regarding NEA's proposals...

NEA's Plan for Reducing School Dropouts/ Slavery for 18 to 21 year olds

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1759212/posts?page=191

[luckystarmom]

My husband dropped out of high school, and took his GED. He lived and worked on his own, and decided he needed to go to college. He put himself through, starting first with a community college and Cal Poly.

Now, he is the director of software engineering for firm in the Silicon Valley.

[luckystarmom]

Back in the early 80s at Texas A&M, many of our professors were foreign. Some had such thick accents, I couldn't understand a thing. I was first a Chemical Engineering major, and it was full of foreign profs. Then I switched to Computer Science, and it didn't have many foreign profs. I also did much better in Computer Science.

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[Kevmo]

Exchange posted on another thread regarding fast tracking:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1785156/posts

Public school lawyers say parents have no say if public schools teach homosexuality
World Net Daily ^ | Feb. 14, 2007


Posted on 02/14/2007 10:26:32 PM PST by SeasideSparrow





To: Kevmo
What you should demand are VOUCHERS.

WHY subsidize this ****?

Fast tracking is all fine and good but you are PAYING for this ****? Stop FUNDING IT!



66 posted on 02/15/2007 12:30:02 PM PST by nmh (Intelligent people recognize Intelligent Design (God) .)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]

[Kevmo]

What you should demand are VOUCHERS.
***We already covered vouchers earlier in the thread. They're as neat as velcro, but not every high school kid can exercise that option TODAY. This fast tracking option can be done by almost any motivated high schooler TODAY at a low budget, to boot.


WHY subsidize this ****?
***Well, first of all, by "subsidize this ****", do you mean to replace some swear word, as in subsidize this filth? Or is it some kind of new punctuation scheme? So the question I'll answer is, "why subsidize this?" The answer is patently obvious once you look through the thread, and that is that it DOES NOT subsidize any further funding into education for the child, and in particular if a child opts out of high school, that school would LOSE its funding.

Fast tracking is all fine and good but you are PAYING for this ****? Stop FUNDING IT!
***OK, so again with the 4 star**** thingie, which I find confusing. Thanks for pointing out that fast tracking is all fine. I would urge you to read through the material because you would come to the conclusion that if a large percentage of kids were to take advantage of this approach, schools would soon see a dramatic decrease in funding. So we are NOT paying for this ****. If you really want to stop funding it, consider the fast tracking alternative as one of the means for accomplishing your goals.

[BnBlFlag]

My son also skipped H.S., got his GED and then went on to Community College and earned his AA Degree (On the Dean's List) a year before he would have graduated from H.S.
Personally, I had a blast in H.S. but those were the "Glory Days" of Public Schools. The schools were safe, pleasant and delivered an excellent education for the most part. The things I liked were cruisin' in my Chev. Conv. and a chasin' girls, girls, girls!

[EDINVA]

Lots of kids here take AP classes in their junior and seniro years (some sophomore). They can then start college with all the Freshman courses out of the way and begin with the standing of a sophomore. I recently read of one local kid who graduated from UVA (no slouch school) after a little more than a year thanks to all his AP credits.

On the other hand, it was a public high school teacher who recommended one of my sons just go straight for his GED when he was in 9th or 10th grade.

The right path will differ from student to student.

[Kevmo]

Things are different now.

[BnBlFlag]

"Things are different now".

Tell me about it!

[Kevmo]

Good article about CLEPs on another thread, looks like they could really help with this program.

CLEPs - One Homeschool Senior’s Experience
Home Educator’s Family Times ^ | July 17, 2007 | Lydia Rule
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1868184/posts

Posted on 07/18/2007 8:09:27 PM PDT by DaveLoneRanger

CLEPs may sound too good to be true, folks, but I’ve taken two of them so far and am working on a third. The credit is just as good as any college, and way less expensive. It’s a fantastic way to rack up some preliminary college credit even during high school.
Read more about CLEP testing

List of CLEP examinations available:

Composition and Literature
* American Literature
* Analyzing and Interpreting Literature
* English Composition
* English Literature
* Freshman College Composition
* Humanities

Foreign Languages

* French Language (Levels 1 and 2)

* German Language (Levels 1 and 2)

* Spanish Language (Levels 1 and 2)

History and Social Sciences

* American Government
* Human Growth and Development
* Introduction to Educational Psychology
* Introductory Psychology
* Introductory Sociology
* Principles of Macroeconomics
* Principles of Microeconomics
* Social Sciences and History
* U.S. History I: Early Colonizations to 1877
* U.S. History II: 1865 to the Present
* Western Civilization I: Ancient Near East to 1648
* Western Civilization II: 1648 to the Present

Science and Mathematics

* Biology
* Calculus
* Chemistry
* College Algebra
* College Mathematics
* Natural Sciences
* Precalculus

Business

* Financial Accounting (New in 2007)
* Introductory Business Law
* Information Systems and Computer Applications
* Principles of Management
* Principles of Marketing

1 posted on 07/18/2007 8:09:29 PM PDT by DaveLoneRanger

[goldi]

My ex-brother-in-law quit school at 16. When he was about 19, he went down to the local four-year college and asked the dean if he could take college classes while working for a GED. The dean said yes. He now is the vice president of finance for a pediatric home care company. Does pretty well too.

[Kevmo]

My high school was among the worst in the nation at the time, even though it was in a “good” neighborhood, because there were forced busing policies from the areas that had high concentrations of minorities (and they closed down the schools in the minority districts). It was a mess caused by well-meaning liberal administrators. Basically the school had the same problems as inner city schools without the teachers nor administrators having the slightest idea of how to deal with it.

A woman who taught in my school wrote a book about her experience, titled “My Posse Don’t Do Homework”. It became a hit movie: “Dangerous Minds” with Michelle Pfeiffer.
***I recently ran across the Wikipedia entry for this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlmont_High_School#Dangerous_Minds

[edit] Dangerous Minds
The novel My_Posse_Don’t_Do_Homework (ctrl-click)”>[[My Posse Don’t Do Homework]] by LouAnne Johnson and subsequent movie Dangerous Minds were loosely based upon her experience as a teacher at Carlmont in the 1990s.[3] Most of her students were African-Americans and Hispanics bused in to Carlmont from East Palo Alto, a then-unincorporated town at the opposite end of the school district from Carlmont. With the closure of Ravenswood High School in East Palo Alto in the early 1970s, much of its predominantly African-American and Hispanic student body was bused to other high schools in the Sequoia High School District, including Carlmont, which had an equally predominantly Caucasian population at the time. A subsequent ‘Open Enrollment’ policy in the school district permitted East Palo Alto students to attend high schools closer to home, space permitting.

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[Shimmer1]

You see, he “let” you. That should have been up to your family, not some bureaucrat. I’m glad he did something right though.

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My children entered college at the ages of 13, 12, and 13. Age wasn’t an issue. Few of the students or teachers even knew they were as young as they were. They just assumed they were 18.