Children should be permitted to take the GED at any age, or a similar qualifying exam. If they pass the local high school would be required to give them an official high school diploma. The student would then be eligible for all state a private scholarships and loans for college or post-secondary training.
Finally....ALL of the government school lectures from first to 12th grade should be filmed and put on the Internet for access by its citizens for FREE! ( We pay taxes don't we?) Then the student ( or any citizen) can move forward at his own pace or fill in and gaps where he may not have fully understood a topic. Qualifying exams would prove he has mastered the material.
Allowing students to graduate from high school and move on into their local community college, university, or post-secondary training would save the taxpayers literally BILLIONS! Fewer schools and teachers would be needed. Also the benefit to the students, allowing them to start their careers earlier could add up to a quarter of a million to a million dollars or more of earnings over a lifetime.
Personally...I think government schools exist for the benefit of teachers, bureaucrats, unions, and Democrat Communist Party. The longer they can keep kids dependent on them and in an infantilized state, the more work for them and the more money that flows into the union and Democrat Party pockets.
You really nailed it. I was floored when my daughter told me she wanted to take the obligatory college math class so she’d be prepared to take the GED, and this before she was old enough to take it. The first day of class, the teacher didn’t know what the “brackets” were called. She informed him they were “curly braces.” He loves her. LOL.