Florida Law Lets Pupils Forgo High School
http://www.watleyreview.com/2003/090903-2.html
Of all the ways attempted to free up space in Florida's crowded classrooms, this one could be a dream come true for high schoolers in a hurry: a diploma without attending school.
Supporters of a law granting a high school diploma to anyone who asks said it will help curb crowding in Florida's schools. Critics fear it will deprive high school graduates of extracurricular activities and valuable classroom skills, such as reading.
The state's top education official is already warning that the new law essentially enabling students to forgo school is not for everyone.
``It was meant for a small group, a band of students, who were not only mature enough but smart enough to obtain a high school diploma based on their life experience,'' Education Commissioner Jim Horne said. ``It's not an attempt under class size pressure to do away with high school. Although, we are offering a $500 cash incentive to any student willing to sign up for the program."
The fast-track graduation law was among several measures passed this spring in the wake of a voter-approved amendment requiring the state to take immediate action to start reducing class sizes and educational spending. Under the option, students can graduate with upon turning eighteen provided that they can demonstrate "life experience" to a panel of examiners in a brief 10-minute oral exam.
"This program could save Florida millions," said Horne. "It's a win-win situation: students are delighted to take home $500 cash, and the state saves thousands in trying to educate them."
No other state has tried a similar program, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Texas started offering scholarships this year to students who stay home their senior year, but only those who complete a gun safety course.
``Kids are having a hard enough time as it is in college,'' said Okeechobee County School District Assistant Superintendent Lee Dixon. ``Do we really want these kids entering college or the workforce with no appreciable skills?"
"They already are," responded Horne. "At least this way we save some money."
Florida state officials declined to comment on speculation that this program is an attempt to wrest the title of most-mocked state from California. Florida held this position for two years following the 2000 presidential election, but was displaced thanks to California's surreal gubernatorial recall.
"I'd think this program would give Florida a pretty good shot at taking the crown back from California," said Dixon. "They may have Gary Coleman on the ballot for the next two months, but we'll have these kids kicking around the state for the rest of their lives."
Copyright (c) 2003 The Watley Review, all rights reserved.
Volume 1, Issue 17, September 9, 2003
More young geniuses skip high school, opt for college
http://www.uh.edu/admin/media/topstories/2001/05/hc052101geniuses.htm
By LYNN BREZOSKY
Associated Press
May 18, 2001, 11:18AM
SCHENECTADY, N.Y. -- From the back, he looks like any other college student measuring electron spin, with his thin wavy hair in a ponytail halfway down his back and his shoulders hunched over a flickering oscilloscope screen.
The boyish voice exclaiming, "Neat!" gives him away. Jackson Reed is 14.
At 2 1/2, he was memorizing books. By 6, he was mastering algebra and hating school.
"I became cynical about halfway through first grade," Reed remembered during a conversation in the Union College campus center. "We were doing these speed tests, like `2 plus 2' ... I would get half of them wrong. Of course, I didn't care. But everyone would constantly harass me."
In the annals of world genius, there have always been Jacksons -- children so smart there is nothing to do but send them to college and hope they thrive.
In the past, they have been consistently rare, said Cliff Adelman of the National Center for Education. The number of university students under 18 has corresponded neatly with the nation's birth rate and college attendance rate. In 1997, the latest data available, just 2.4 percent -- or 353,000 of 14.5 million high school students -- were enrolled in higher education.
Yet those who specialize in academically gifted students say they have observed a recent surge in the numbers of those at four-year schools, a trend they credit to more college-educated families, more enrichment programs, home schooling, and even to higher IQs.
Reed's mother pulled him out of school when bullying started at age 8.
"He was definitely picked on," said Janet Reed. "He thought differently and he was different. You know how kids are."
Private school cost too much, so education became a family project involving everything from Internet course work and mail-order lectures to Mom's old college textbooks.
At 12, he got a 1540 on the SAT; 1600 is a perfect score on the college aptitude exam.
Last year, he entered Union, a small campus of 2,000 students known for educating future computer scientists, biologists and engineers. It's also only about a half-hour drive from the Reeds' Troy home. All of that is important, Janet Reed said. "Basically, this is his high school."
Math professor Julius Barbanel said he talks to Reed on the same level as he would a colleague.
Student Greg Schwanbeck, 19, who has been Reed's occasional lab partner, said he tries to treat Reed as an equal -- who's really smart.
"I learned early on in physics that you definitely want to fit in with those at the top of the physics pecking order," Schwanbeck said. "He's right up there."
Kids are a lot brighter than they used to be, according to Julian Stanley, a psychologist who started the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University back in 1972.
"When I went to high school, there was no calculus, there was no physics," said Stanley, who is 82. "Now it's a lazy bright kid who doesn't take calculus. It used to be we collected butterflies and catalogued them. Now they have to do something that looks like a Ph.D. dissertation."
While Stanley defends the best public high schools as being very good, the Center for Talented Youth is increasingly referring students to college campuses. And colleges are opening their doors to the younger students, even tailoring a few programs by setting up mini-campus centers, counselors and supervised dorms. Sensing a market, some universities are assuming the role of super-accelerated high schools.
"Maybe it's the competition to get the best and brightest," said Linda Brody, director of the center's Study of Exceptional Talent. "We're seeing it more and more. It's a trend."
Four years ago, after a summer program at Duke University that she describes as "three weeks of pure bliss" with "other nerds that were just like me," Danielle Correll left school after the eighth grade to enter Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Va. There, she triple majors in art, international relations and French.
The social life, Correll said, was the best part of her experience.
While some young students can handle being on their own in college, most experts don't advise it. Reed still lives with his family, and while he appears comfortably detached from the wild side of campus life (he said going to a fraternity party would be "an anthropological exhibition where one is as Jane Goodall among the apes"), his parents aren't about to set him free to experiment.
Stanley has seen students get lost.
One student enrolled at Johns Hopkins at 14, after being valedictorian of his high school. "He really fouled it up," Stanley said. "At the end of the year he sold his microscopes and bought a guitar and headed off to California. He was trying to act 18. He wouldn't take a bath. He was a pain in the neck."
The jury is still out as to whether fast-track kids have markedly more successful lives. A longitudinal study affiliated with the Johns Hopkins program and now being continued at Vanderbilt University is tracking more than 5,000 students as they progress through life.
Reed sees many possibilities for his future -- technology, web design, particle physics, theoretical math, topology in logic. Correll has taken a civilian job with the U.S. Navy, where she'll be negotiating international contracts for aviation weapons systems.
But fast track is no guarantee.
Michael Kearney made the Guinness Book of World Records as the youngest college student, graduating from the University of South Alabama at 10 with a bachelor's degree in anthropology.
Though at 14 he earned a master's in biochemistry from Middle Tennessee State University with a thesis focusing on cancer research, it was after being rejected for graduate enrollment by Duke, Emory and Vanderbilt universities.
Age in itself isn't necessarily impressive, Harvard Law School Dean of Admissions Joyce Curll explained. Law in particular is a field where life experience weighs as heavily as anything else. Business is another.
"We look at what they have accomplished," she said. "People don't need to be in a hurry."