Charles Murray has a **great** idea! Private qualifying exams!
Think about it. How many jobs in the U.S. could be done by people with the solid eight grade educations of my parent's generation? Very very few jobs require a college education. A privately administered qualifying exam could prove to the employer that the applicant was, indeed, well enough educated to do a job.
We could begin by awarding an official high school diploma from the local high school to any child of **any** age who passed the GED or similar private exam. ( Private would be better.) This would immediately open up post high school scholarship aid to the child and make entry into the military more straight forward. Eventually, the high school diploma should be made ( by law) unnecessary for the military and scholarships and the exam results alone should be ruled completely sufficient.
Qualifying exams could start in the first grade. Once a child proved he had mastered a level of a specific subject he could immediately move on to the next level. Ambitious children could complete eight grade or high school **years** sooner. Those children who were not hard working or not as bright would smack their noses against the hard reality that they did not know the material.
And... Large parts of the education could even be **free** to the student. Nearly all of the lectures and written material could be presented on-line. The producers of outstanding material, and highly reliable and certifiable testing centers, could become very rich if they accepted advertising.
Homeschoolers have proved that children can finish their elementary and secondary educations many years ahead of the expected lock-step schedule. By starting their careers years ahead they can accumulate hundreds of thousands of dollars more in wealth than their peers who are institutionalized for their educations. They can buy a home, marry, and start families. They are not locked into this emotionally (and spiritually) unhealthy and semi-adolescent educational wonderland of graduate school degrees, schooling debt, hanging-out, and hooking-up, that entangles so many in their late 20s and early 30s.
Also, if qualifying exams could start in the first grade it would encourage a vigorous private tutoring industry. Parents would also begin to take more responsibility for educating their own children. And....Think of the savings to the tax payer for every year that a child does not spend in the government schools.
As a former owner and doctor in a health clinic I testify that a high school diploma is utterly worthless in determining if an applicant for a job is literate or numerate. If an applicant had passed a well respected and private qualifying exam that would have had real value for me. I wasted far too much time interviewing high school graduates who simply could not read or do the most basic 4th grade arithmetic. Towards the end of my career, even though nearly all the work done in my clinic could have been done by those with an eight grade education, I would only interview applicants that had at least some community college.