Success in our High School's is probably the biggest single indicator of the health of our nation - this is where kids start to spread their wings as adult and make choices. Some of those choices will be bad, and the best among the class, in the end, will likely make their fare share.

Factors in that success are not something that can be codified - it is more a measure of the organization and its community, it's ability to function realistically than anything else.

The one thing I'd like to see is a significant portion of teaching positions set aside for those who have real world experience and are making a second career in the schools. These transitions build depth in a person and a minimum of 25% should be such.

Right now, with perceived deadwood getting cut, would be a time to increase turnover rates in our school teaching ranks - as well as the entire public sector.

But again, nothing is going to work unless you have a realistic constructive community. SUCCESS AS A HUMAN CANNOT BE CODIFIED!

Perhaps not all Running Start students are ready for college level courses, but I can tell you first hand that Running Start literally saved my daughter's life. An honors students at a local private high school, my daughter struggled with the challenges of peer pressure and was pretty much ostracized for being younger and different than her classmates until she finally gave up. Her mental health counselor suggested Running Start and two years later my daughter graduated with a high school diploma and Associates in Arts and Sciences degree with high honors Phi Theta Kappa at the age of 17. She turns 19 tomorrow and is happily into a double major at a public 4-year institution. She thrived in the diversity only community colleges can provide.

Running Start gets my daughter two years of transferable college credit for free, thanks to the state of Washington. Does the author somehow consider that to be a trivial consideration in today's economy?

So far she is getting straight A's at the community college level, and she is benefiting from the higher level of instruction and the smaller class sizes that her high school could not possibly provide her, even in the best-case scenario.

She will be taking all her core courses -- every single one -- at the community college and limiting her high-school participation to PE and Drama. She finds this arragnement to be stimulating, liberating, and very exciting. The UW admissions counselor told her that the leap from high school to community college would be greater than the leap from community college to the UW, and she has handled it with ease.

I won't claim that one student's experience is representative, but I'm guessing that my daughter's reaction to this author's conclusions about the Running Start program might be along the lines of "What planet is this guy on?"

Finally, a commonsensical article on higher education. Education in this country has been subsumed by a entire assessment industry fixated on metrics, rubrics and ratings, all the while fetishizing the passing of tests. High standards? Pooh. What's their test score(s)? Can they compose a coherent sentence? Formulate a series of cogent thoughts? Intellectually defend a stated position? Who knows? Although they can sure fill in ovals well with a number two pencil.

Innovation and creativity are a function of learning, not WASLing.

Laurence Ballard, professor
Savannah College of Art and Design
Cornish College of the Arts (1994-2002)

I don't think this writer gives Running Start students enough credit. I also work at a community college, and have seen many Running Start students demonstrate a maturity and commitment beyond their peers who are high school graduates. I can't speak to the impact of Running Start students' absence in high school classes, and I'm sure there are parents who inappropriately push their children to participate in Running Start, but my personal experience strongly contradicts the writer's assertion that most Running Start students aren't ready to benefit from the academic challenge of college-level classes.

Hooray for Mr. Sell for asking the insightful question - What does taking these students away from the school leave behind?
I wish he had given us a suggestion of an alternative model. I can't imagine that from where I stand.
Our household has one college grad in science, one college junior, and a student currently in Running Start.
The econ class my youngest is taking at North Seattle has made him consider that for his college major. His political science class inspired him to much individual study.
These are classes (and ideas) of depth that he would not have encountered in most high schools. I wish he could get that depth, but it just wasn't available.
I think the question of social and psychological maturity is a tougher one. From the public policy view, it may be that acceleration and advancement are leaving high-schools empty of some of the leadership that once put out great newspapers and staffed debate teams and designed model rockets.
But for those of us parents who see diminishing resources for our most thoughtful students, there does not seem to a choice.

Sell seems to have a very poor idea of what goes on in high school classrooms. A dilemma for any teacher is how to teach the class when some students are way ahead of the others. Some choose to compromise by teaching at the mid level, so bright students are a bit less bored and struggling students don't struggle quite as much, and some teacher target the struggling students, in which case they do better but the education of the bright students is completely neglected. By having running-start and AP, the bright students are put in classes where they are actually challanged, and teachers in regular classes can focus on teaching students farther behind.

The idea that if you put bright students in a class they will help struggling students is naive. Bright students aren't teachers and they befriend mostly other bright students. Plus, it isn't fair to them -- they want to learn just like everyone else. Most of them can learn more by reading books on their own then attending a class at the regular level.

As for the claim that AP classes and running start aren't at college level, Sell's personal experience doesn't mean much. I'm sure it varies from school district to school district, but the AP classes I took were much harder then the 100 level courses I had in college. Again, personal experience, but considering all the people with good experiences in running start and AP, you're going to need data that includes more than personal experience and opinion before you say bright high school kids don't benefit from these programs.

Want to make high schools better? Look elsewhere.

Dr. Sell paints a Pollyannic-view of the way things ‘should be’ – very reminiscent of days-gone-by… I’d love to buy-into what the Dr. is selling, but left unmentioned are some of the root causes of failing schools (and schools failing their students). Things have changed in the past 20, 30 or 40 years. Solve or dispel some of these concerns, and I may reconsider my perspective:

- A disproportionate number of the youth who are failing in high schools have no interest in doing well. It’s “un-cool” and unnecessary. Kids see how their parents live off of welfare, inherit a sense of entitlement and don’t aspire to do any better (related to the next point). It’s fair to say that uber-rich kids have the same entitlement mentality. LOCAL culture and well-meant government programs are often enablers for this behavior.

- Lack of parental involvement in their child’s education. Chalk this up to single and married parents who are too busy, strung out, or not interested in the responsibility of raising a child. This speaks to broken families – which have become the norm to a large degree. Both my spouse and I hold full time jobs, have a couple of chronic health problems and struggle to take care of the daily bills – but that does NOT EXCUSE us from taking responsibility for our child’s preparation and education. Our family should NOT be the exception, but I’m finding more and more often that it is.

- The lack of authority that teachers have in their own classroom to enforce the rules (and weak administrators to back them up). In inner-city schools, this motivates good teachers to leave for less combative environments. As much as teaching is a ‘calling’ for many, most teachers don’t sign up to be abused by parents, students and administrators. As a concerned parent, I’d rather spend my time getting my child out of an unsafe, uninspiring environment and into a better and different program - than trying to fix a broken juggernaut. Perhaps once I’ve retired and the children have left the house, I’ll have MORE time to champion change in our local schools and district – but until then: the weekly 2-hour average I currently spend will have to do.

- Teaching has become too political. Get the politics OUT of the classroom so I can feel good about sending my child to a public school without worrying about the type of rhetoric they’re going to bring home from a teacher or the curriculum. Schools spend WAY too much time and money on ‘cultural enlightenment’, and not enough on the foundational academics. Cultural studies are NOT the equal of foundational academics in the development of an academically successful student (ESPECIALLY in high school). The goal is NOT to produce socially- or culturally-aware welfare recipients.

Solve these problems and mentalities, and _then_ you might see parents (like me) opting to keep their children IN high school rather than pulling them out for AP- or Running Start-programs (where the focus IS on more traditional academics). In the meantime, I won’t have my child sit through class while an instructor spoon-feeds material to the lowest common denominator.

Finally, as the spouse of an inner-city school teacher, I also resent the implication behind the Dr.’s “No Rich White Child Left Behind”-comment… Has Dr. Sell even stepped into an inner-city school recently? Is he aware of the loads of money that flow into these schools in order to promote learning? What every higher-learning-academic or government-policy-wonk seems to be in denial about is that no matter how much money you throw at a school program, the school will fail without active parental- and community-involvement. The difference between the ‘typical’ inner-city school and the ‘rich white’ kid school has more to do with the ownership a community feels in seeing it’s children and schools succeed versus the amount of dollars spent. Fix the cultural problem surrounding failing schools, and then you might see an improvement. More likely though: I fully expect that most people will continue to live in denial that there IS a cultural problem that needs to be addressed in poverty areas, and that things will continue to deteriorate.

Regards,
Arthur

Sorry, I couldn't read past the first point.

My kids are in school for the same reason any one else's are: to learn and be challenged to their fullest potential. They are certainly not there to be tutors. How is learning how to tutor an acceptable academic substitute for learning advanced math, for example? If it's such a great academic alternative, why not expect it from everyone, not just the highly-capable? Is the point really that it's more important for my kids to help someone else get up to standard than it is for my kids to be educated beyond standard? How very Soviet.

Nor do my kids need a broader exposure to a greater mix of people. They already have that. Their friends are far more diverse in all respects than mine were at that age. They've just been isolated from the kids who'd tell them that reading during recess is uncool, that's all. I see no reason to give that up.

those parents who champion running start ignore the environment that their students leave behind.

if high schools could quickly discharge the many trouble makers and those who consistently don't show up for class, the overall environment would begin to change, and for the better.

children of parents who aren't involved, don't care are a separate problem and should be delt with as such.

the current high school environment has become so bad that even those who escape via running start enter the community college system with gaps in their knowledge base.

Peddle your right-wing crap elsewhere, steptoe.fan. Nobody here is buying what you're selling, except for the few dittoheads like yourself who find their way here.

I'm not ignoring the environment my student is "leaving behind" because she isn't leaving it behind at all. She is very much a part of her high school community.

We went to Running Start because we had that option, and because the state is funding it with the same money the high school would be getting if she stayed there. I said earlier that even under the best-case scenario, the high school couldn't compete with the level of instruction the community college provides. In our experience, even the high school's AP program doesn't compete. And why should they? They're a separate level of education.

The state Constitution says that one of state government's basic functions is K-12 education. So nobody's "discharging" anyone.

Moreover, your statement that "the current high school environment has become so bad that even those who escape via running start enter the community college system with gaps in their knowledge base" is just a lot of crap, and you can't back it up just because you heard it on Rush or Dori.

I am a retired high school teacher, and I agree wholeheartedly with what Dr. Sell is saying. The high school student who feels that there is nothing more for him to learn at that level--and it's often really the parent who says this--is grossly mistaken. What the student acquires in the last couple years of high school is not so much additional subject matter as it is maturation. And this is a process that cannot be hurried.

I also at times taught college freshmen and sophomores, and I guarantee that there is wide chasm intellectually between students in that age group and high school juniors and seniors.

I believe it was Mark Twain who said, "Wheb I was 20, I thought my dad was a fool. When I turned 23, I was amazed how much the old man had learned in three short years." That's the kind of maturation that cannot be hurried.

harrybari

Mr. Sell takes a lot of heat for pointing out the dilemmas in American education. Those who take the time to follow the hearings at School Board meetings hear speaker after speaker speak as though educating kids is the total responsibility of schools. It never has been. Apparently they have never learned that education is the responsibility of the greater society. Nation wide, if we directed more of the money we spend on on dog food, cosmetics, sports stadiums, and concert tickets toward education we would solve at least a few of the problems.

There are parents so involved in shaping their careers and bodies that they pay little attention to their kids. They expect schools to teach algebra along with table manners and sex education. There are also parents who send their kids to school to be taught how to speak, tie their shoes, be fed breakfast and lunch along with becoming civilized and taught to read all at the same time. It’s impossible for schools to raise kids and educate them as well. With all due respect to all who are devising solutions, I simply don’t think it’s possible to please everyone or for schools to be both parent and teacher.

All who have commented are absolutely correct, but also a bit myopic. Sell is right that removing the best and the brightest from classrooms takes away the image or example of achievement and learning. And yes, there are badly conceived tests, and yes, bright kids can help slower students. It is said that sometimes we never learn anything as well as when we try to teach it to others.

But, depriving those bright kids of the chance to be challenged is a greater waste. The best and the brightest are essential in todays world to become the inventors, scientists, and maybe the ones who can find solutions to some of our more complex problems. It is they who will create the jobs for the rest of us. No one counts, but it may well be true that there are as many bright kids as dropouts as kids with less potential.

But as was said, a gifted person can easily become arrogant and never learn to work with people of normal or below intelligence. Bright kids need to learn how to be good leaders as well as good thinkers. Totally isolating them in schools or society seems counterproductive.

It is rather ironic that the law which has defined the role and need for special education and has demanded it be funded, has overlooked that the gifted, by definition, qualify for special help and need special help every bit as much as those intellectually challenged. But they don’t get a share of the funding dollar.

And while were spouting off, school administrators are as much of the problem as uncaring parents or legislators who fail to fund schools. Collectively they fail to listen, and claim they are the professionals and we are to trust their judgement. Baloney, they are arrogant and unwilling to shed the incompetent from their ranks.

So lets give Sell a break, he has let us to a broader discussion that focuses more on the real problem that you can’t please everyone and as parents we dam will better expect to take on more responsibility ourselves.