Posted on 03/23/2011 8:24:25 PM PDT by 2nd amendment mama
High school senior Jared Dennis wants to join the U.S. Air Force. If you look at his credentials, he would appear to be someone any branch of the military would be happy to have. He has a 3.9 grade point average while taking courses like statistics and Japanese and he plays in a regional orchestra.
But when he went through the recruitment process with the Air Force, he was told he is a Tier 2 candidate because he attends an online virtual high school.
Less than 1 percent of the people the Air Force accepts can be Tier 2 candidates, which includes home-schooled students and those who earn a GED.
“It was heart-breaking, to say the least, that I put in all this time and effort looking at how I could get into the Air Force, not only for myself but to serve my nation. That’s one thing that I really want to do,” Dennis said.
He and his mother, Alice, met Wednesday with Congressman Joe Wilson, R-SC, and state superintendent Dr. Mick Zais, who’s a retired Army brigadier general.
Wilson serves as chairman of the House Armed Services personnel subcommittee, served 31 years in the National Guard and has four sons in the military. He told Dennis he’ll work to get the Department of Defense to change its policy.
“When I return next week to Washington, I’ll be working to put this in the National Defense Authorization Act,” Wilson said.
Tier 1 students are those who graduate from a traditional high school, while Tier 2 students are those with alternative credentials, like a home school diploma, a GED or a diploma from a correspondence, Internet or distance-learning program.
Tier 3 is for someone without any secondary school credential.
Non-Tier 1 applicants who are accepted are limited to no more than 10 percent in the Army, 5 percent in the Navy and Marine Corps and less than 1 percent in the Air Force.
Zais said, “The difficulty and rigor of the curriculum in our cyber schools exceeds that in many of our traditional schools. Seems to me this is probably just a policy in Washington that made sense 15 years ago when there was a lot of fly-by-night companies offering fake degrees.”
He points out that the state’s virtual charter schools have the same accreditation as brick-and-mortar schools and students take the same standardized tests.
Dennis is still hoping he’ll be able to join the Air Force. If he’s not allowed to enlist, he said he plans to go to college and join ROTC.
Which school did you choose?
This kid probably should go to college. My son took the GED early and went to college. He was bored in high school and I think the high school was glad to see his back. He went on to college and got his nursing degree. After 9/11 applied to all three branches of the military. They all three accepted him. Given his IQ scores and learning abilities, I am sure he did very well on the tests. They certainly offered him many opportunities.
He actually loved the military. He saw it as a place where they encouraged him to do what he could do.
The military gave me a good start but I probably should have went to college first.
The military hasn’t adopted to the new schooling methods yet. It will take some pushing but they will change.
That’s absolutely awe inspiring!! Thanks for the link.
The video says that he scored high on the test......
LOL....You must be a proud papa.
I was a homeschooler back in the 70’s when it still wasn’t legal. No such thing as the internet or any kind of resources. We used EVERY situation in daily living as a lesson. Fought a couple of school districts. That’s why this totally ticks me off.
LOL
>>Maybe that’s why they insist on the smarts up front because they don’t beat them into the raw recruits.
How does a HS diploma demonstrate smarts up front?
I would think they would use instruments like the ASVAB/AFQT and the SAT for that. A HS diploma means nothing these days.
Given what we know about how home-schooled kids compare to the general HS population (hugely better on academics), this policy is absurd.
They didn’t give his exact scores but they said that they were high.
This is exactly the kind of brainless chit that you pay some apparatchik Colonel 100K per year to think up. Colonel Brainless is prolly planning his next vacation and buying some retirement property.
And his his fat paycheck is supplied by private sector taxpayers trying to figure out how to make their next
mortgage payment.
**************
Hey there. I am married to a Pentagon “commando” who works an 80-hours a week, who does not have time for vacations or golf, who rarely sees his kids, gets called several times through the middle of the night everytime a new crisis interrupts, and yet who also has a tough time coming up w/ the mortage, because $100K in DC is a cut above a taxi driver’s salary. That’s when he’s not deployed ... Actually, the Pentagon bit is a respite from taking mortar fire and portable showers in the desert.
Watch it.
Not PC crap.
The Feds want to force people through their daycare system for indoctrination.
Can’t have people actually trained to think for themselves...
Typical mom, my son is not a flunky. Even if he is.
Don’t be a hater.
Public schools are a failure.
LOL, what bs, don’t use that liberal term hater with me. You can either pass the entrance exam are you cannot . This is the real world stuff.
“You can either pass the entrance exam are you cannot . This is the real world stuff.”
Did you see somewhere where the entrance exam was an issue? No, the story is about how he didn’t graduate from a traditional public school which essentially disqualified him.
Perhaps you might read at least PART of the article before jumping to conclusions. Knowing the facts is real world stuff ya know.
A high school diploma is worthless for determining whether a person is educated or not. Our community colleges are filled with illiterate and innumerate students with high school diplomas.
Ok....Now I will go on to read the article.
There is not one word in the story that gives his “air force test result”, only the statement as a kid without a degree he has to be treaded the same as other GED kids.
Exactly.
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