Should parents legally pay for their ADULT children's tuitio

[Terralthra]

I'm not sure I'd organize things the way Hammer would; we tend to disagree on issues rather often. I just think that we do need some kind of correlation between the state's willingness to plunk down N thousand dollars to support a college student, and the probability of it being worth N thousand dollars to get them that degree.

Otherwise, it would make more sense to plow the money back into improving primary and secondary education, among other things so that our high schools can stop sending unprepared ignoramuses off to college in the first place.

I think if the government acted like a business (return on investment, etc.), it would be doing things that businesses can already do for themselves. The whole point of having a government is to do the things that are valuable in terms other than can be summarized on a cost-benefit analysis. Providing food stamps has a negative value return, e.g.

[Simon_Jester]

In this case, education does have a positive value return to society at large- it has cash value as well as intrinsic value.

My argument is that because the state does not have infinity dollars to spend on education, it should seek to maximize the amount of education that happens as a result of its dollars.

Measured in terms of the amount of education that results, it is arguably wasteful to fund the full college tuition of a random person who places in the 30th or 40th percentile of ability among American high school students. It might actually be more worthwhile to send the same money to a high school and provide better high school education. Or to an elementary school and ensure the students are better prepared when they arrive at the high school.

The government would do this without seeking to profit- it would be doing this to do the most good, to use its finite resources to eliminate as much suffering and cause as much public good as it can.

[Elheru Aran]

The biggest problem with American education is that there is no really popular alternative to college in terms of post-grade school education. There needs to be some form of vocational education that doesn't have the whole "oh, you didn't go to college?" stigma. If your grades in high school were mediocre and you don't have any great ambition for your life but you do know you want to work in a certain field, why not have the option of going to a trade school for that field rather than waste several years of extraneous classes and financial aid in order to pick up a degree which is functionally equivalent to what said trade school would have taught you without the Art 301 or How to Write Pompous Essays 101 classes?

Say you have a young man who likes to work on cars in high school. Solid C student due to attention-span problems, but a genius mechanic. Is it worth it for him to waste his time trying to go to college to get, say, an Engineering degree, probably fail and have his job prospects shot for the next few years? Or would it be better for him to take two years in an auto-engineering school and come out with an excellent certificate in automobile mechanics or assembling cars or whatever, be guaranteed a job at pretty much any garage he applies to and probably make a lot better money than he would if he ended up dropping out of college?

But we don't really have that option. If you end up dropping out of college for whatever reason, your odds of getting back in grow increasingly lower with each year you spend away. If you go directly to a community college (I honestly don't know if there's any such thing as a "trade school" in the States these days other than union apprenticeship programs), people will ask you why you didn't just go to regular college. If you go into trade school, you have the mark against you of not having a college degree, even though most Bachelor's degrees are pretty much just a "OK, you can hire this guy" sticker...

(Yeah, I'm frustrated. Can you guess why?)

[TheHammer]

The biggest problem with American education is that there is no really popular alternative to college in terms of post-grade school education. There needs to be some form of vocational education that doesn't have the whole "oh, you didn't go to college?" stigma. If your grades in high school were mediocre and you don't have any great ambition for your life but you do know you want to work in a certain field, why not have the option of going to a trade school for that field rather than waste several years of extraneous classes and financial aid in order to pick up a degree which is functionally equivalent to what said trade school would have taught you without the Art 301 or How to Write Pompous Essays 101 classes?

Say you have a young man who likes to work on cars in high school. Solid C student due to attention-span problems, but a genius mechanic. Is it worth it for him to waste his time trying to go to college to get, say, an Engineering degree, probably fail and have his job prospects shot for the next few years? Or would it be better for him to take two years in an auto-engineering school and come out with an excellent certificate in automobile mechanics or assembling cars or whatever, be guaranteed a job at pretty much any garage he applies to and probably make a lot better money than he would if he ended up dropping out of college?

But we don't really have that option. If you end up dropping out of college for whatever reason, your odds of getting back in grow increasingly lower with each year you spend away. If you go directly to a community college (I honestly don't know if there's any such thing as a "trade school" in the States these days other than union apprenticeship programs), people will ask you why you didn't just go to regular college. If you go into trade school, you have the mark against you of not having a college degree, even though most Bachelor's degrees are pretty much just a "OK, you can hire this guy" sticker...

(Yeah, I'm frustrated. Can you guess why?)

It seems to me many community colleges offer exactly what you're looking for. One or two year programs designed to get you into an actual career rather than simply being pre-reqs on a Bachelor degree. Usually far more affordable than going the full university route.

[Elheru Aran]

Yeah, I know about those. I'm talking about schools specifically dedicated to trade education-- mechanics, construction, high end restaurant work, et cetera. Community college can have these exact things-- I considered going to one once for culinary arts-- but ultimately I don't know that they're specialized enough given the wide range of degrees they usually offer. I mean, another one I looked at, you could get a welding certificate by itself. Useful in a bunch of jobs? Sure, but it's not really going to actually get you a job. Being able to get a degree that tells any potential employer that you're an A++ employee if hired would be far more useful.

You could even get some of the major corporations into the act. Take my example of the mechanic kid-- what would be worth more to an employer, a community college degree in auto mechanic, or a GM Goodwrench certification for working on General Motors cars? A degree in restaurant management that's sponsored by, oh, let's say the Food Network and the corporations behind Chili's, Olive Garden, etc?

Of course the problem with such a 'sponsorship' would be increased costs...

[PKRudeBoy]

I think that part of the problem is the stigma that seems to surround trades in the US these days, along with the self esteem movement. It's not even an issue of pay necessarily, just the perception that working in a trade is lower class, while working in an office is not. It doesn't matter that the electrician from local 3 might be making $75 an hour, he's doing it wearing jeans and a dirty t-shirt, and has to go and actually work with his hands, and a lot of my generation quite frankly sees it as beneath them. Furthermore, from the outside at least, it doesn't look like there's as much growth potential, unless you want to start your own business, which is risky. If you have a shitty office job, sure it might suck now, but maybe one day you'll work your way up to Executive Vice President, or Director of Marketing, and get a company car and stock options.

[Simon_Jester]

Of course, this is delusional insanity, but every generation has their delusional insanities.

Two or three years ago my "fuck it" plan if the sequence of career options I've actually been exploring ever panned out was to go become a machinist; I don't know how that would have panned out for me but I seriously considered it.

[Vejut]

You could even get some of the major corporations into the act. Take my example of the mechanic kid-- what would be worth more to an employer, a community college degree in auto mechanic, or a GM Goodwrench certification for working on General Motors cars? A degree in restaurant management that's sponsored by, oh, let's say the Food Network and the corporations behind Chili's, Olive Garden, etc?

Toyota and GM both actually do that, and I'd be shocked if the other car companies didn't, though mostly its for their "in house" dealer mechanics, and its often a partnership with a community college anyways. I actually have an associates in diesel equiptment maintenance from a local community college (Community College of Baltimore County), and it was funded strongly by a local Caterpillar dealer. The same college also had a deal with the local GM dealers to tech their techs--our electrical class was actually taught by the GM instructor, IIRC. That said, while I've got the degree, I suspect that for both me and the GM guys, ASE tests (which the class was basically taught to anyways, with some extra information specific to the company in question) would be more important to hiring.

I'd guess anything along those lines in other industries would also use the community college route--they've already got the classroom infrastructure and often the instructors in place.

I'd say PKRudeBoy probably has a decent stab at it. It's often physically demanding, its got a lower- or lower-middle-class reputation, you don't really see the growth that well, and not mentioned but possibly more importantly, at least when I went through school, it was drilled hard into our heads that college grads made more, so you should just plain go to college. I imagine the anti-union push on "why should an assembly line worker make $30 an hour?" doesn't help either, adding to the "don't make any money" idea.

[Simon_Jester]

I know that in my local school system, the focus is almost entirely on college-readiness. This is probably in part because of the focus on standardized testing, which is usually aimed at the "high school to college" track and not the "high school to auto mechanic" track.

Since the testing determines whether higher echelons think our school is doing its job, we concentrate on improving the test scores... which in turn means we spend basically all our time and energy saying "this is for college," because that's about the only thing that high standardized test scores are good for.

[Lagmonster]

This is more of a comment on general education reform, but in the modern world, I wonder whether or not we ought to expand our current high school education diploma requirements.

Would it simply be better to tack on an additional two years to high school, wherein they could cover ground in the entry level of college-tier mathematics, science, and humanities. I would prefer to make a high school degree worth more than 'barely good enough', and make university degrees that much harder to get, which would hopefully make them rarer and drive their value up.

When you hear about university-level degrees being sought after for entry-level secretarial positions, my impression is that you've added nothing but a 'much spend this much money to have a career' barrier to life.

[Borgholio]

I honestly don't know if there's any such thing as a "trade school" in the States these days

There are. I went to one before I got into the computer industry to learn automotive repair. There are plenty of schools to learn how to be a mechanic, electrician, wood / metalworker, etc... They offer courses ranging from 3 months to a couple years (mine was 6 months). In my case, in addition to a certificate showing I completed the course, they also got me ASE and ATRA certified. So I did have some good credentials under my belt for my age.

people will ask you why you didn't just go to regular college.

Less expensive, less time in school, quicker into the job market, didn't need a degree to do what I wanted to do, etc...

Plenty of good excuses that any reasonably intelligent person could understand.

If you go into trade school, you have the mark against you of not having a college degree, even though most Bachelor's degrees are pretty much just a "OK, you can hire this guy" sticker...

Depends on the job. If you're looking to be a mechanic, then graduating from Wyoming Technical Institute (my school) is a pretty good mark in your favor. It's only those white-collar industries (at least from what I've seen) that require a degree. For example, my wife wanted to be an auto appraiser for a large insurance company. She has a good 5+ years of experience in the field at another insurance company, but the idiot interviewer required a 4 year college degree...and he even said it doesn't matter if it's related to the industry, it needs to be a degree PERIOD.

[Simon_Jester]

This is more of a comment on general education reform, but in the modern world, I wonder whether or not we ought to expand our current high school education diploma requirements.

Would it simply be better to tack on an additional two years to high school, wherein they could cover ground in the entry level of college-tier mathematics, science, and humanities. I would prefer to make a high school degree worth more than 'barely good enough', and make university degrees that much harder to get, which would hopefully make them rarer and drive their value up.

When you hear about university-level degrees being sought after for entry-level secretarial positions, my impression is that you've added nothing but a 'much spend this much money to have a career' barrier to life.

My opinion has been and remains that this is because our high schools are not meritocratic enough. We work very hard to push students through high school, even if they have no particular wish to get that diploma. As a result, having the diploma says a lot less than it should about your intelligence, attitude, competence, responsibility, and aptitude for complex work.

If there were a realistic chance of getting expelled from high school for being an intolerable git or an unmotivated blob, then the diploma would be worth more. Both because it would actually distinguish meaningfully between graduates and nongraduates, and because teachers now preoccupied with their lowest-performing students would have more time and resources to devote to raising the average level of education.

Spend all your time trying to make sure no one is left behind, and you are unlikely to get very far very fast.

[Welf]

Er... that's not quite my argument. My argument is that some students lack the academic aptitude to complete a degree, and it may well be that tertiary education is not for everyone. There has to be some layer of education that only a modest percentage of the population actually obtains.

I don't think you understood what my point was. I agree that tertiary is not for everybody and it's better for some people to take for example an apprenticeship. But if it is better for them to take another approach the interest of state and individual are aligned. So the optimal approach is sit down with someone, estimate his skills develop a plan and offer him opportunities to pursuit other options.
You however talk about not "subsidize unlimited higher education" and that "the state could gauge which people it's not worth spending taxpayer dollars to put through college". And that's why I call it a replay of the "welfare queen" obsession. Yes, there will always be a few idiots who abuse the system. But the answer is not to limit the supply of resources as first and only approach but to accept that any system will produce some outliers.

[PKRudeBoy]

Er... that's not quite my argument. My argument is that some students lack the academic aptitude to complete a degree, and it may well be that tertiary education is not for everyone. There has to be some layer of education that only a modest percentage of the population actually obtains.

I don't think you understood what my point was. I agree that tertiary is not for everybody and it's better for some people to take for example an apprenticeship. But if it is better for them to take another approach the interest of state and individual are aligned. So the optimal approach is sit down with someone, estimate his skills develop a plan and offer him opportunities to pursuit other options.
You however talk about not "subsidize unlimited higher education" and that "the state could gauge which people it's not worth spending taxpayer dollars to put through college". And that's why I call it a replay of the "welfare queen" obsession. Yes, there will always be a few idiots who abuse the system. But the answer is not to limit the supply of resources as first and only approach but to accept that any system will produce some outliers.

I don't think you get the massive difference in magnitude between providing unlimited subsidized tertiary education, and a few welfare cheats. It's not about people cheating the system. It's about the economic sense of the state paying for people that do not need college degrees for their jobs to get one. Even if everyone got to go to college for free, we would still need people to work in menial jobs. That is a simple fact of life. So please, tell me the point of the state paying for the tertiary education of a bottom quintile student who will have trouble passing even basic requirements and is going to go work in retail or wait tables anyway.

[Edi]

This is more of a comment on general education reform, but in the modern world, I wonder whether or not we ought to expand our current high school education diploma requirements.

Would it simply be better to tack on an additional two years to high school, wherein they could cover ground in the entry level of college-tier mathematics, science, and humanities. I would prefer to make a high school degree worth more than 'barely good enough', and make university degrees that much harder to get, which would hopefully make them rarer and drive their value up.

When you hear about university-level degrees being sought after for entry-level secretarial positions, my impression is that you've added nothing but a 'much spend this much money to have a career' barrier to life.

My opinion has been and remains that this is because our high schools are not meritocratic enough. We work very hard to push students through high school, even if they have no particular wish to get that diploma. As a result, having the diploma says a lot less than it should about your intelligence, attitude, competence, responsibility, and aptitude for complex work.

If there were a realistic chance of getting expelled from high school for being an intolerable git or an unmotivated blob, then the diploma would be worth more. Both because it would actually distinguish meaningfully between graduates and nongraduates, and because teachers now preoccupied with their lowest-performing students would have more time and resources to devote to raising the average level of education.

Spend all your time trying to make sure no one is left behind, and you are unlikely to get very far very fast.

If you compare the US school system to a tree, it is shedding leaves and bark, rot, fungus and all kinds of other maladies have set in through failure by design and mismanagement. It's just a matter of time before something in the main trunk cracks and it comes crashing down.

You'd need to actually tear the whole edifice down and rebuild it from the ground up, equalize funding between districts, get rid of the standardized tests and the teaching to the test to secure funds bullshit and a myriad other things, and keep the private sector right the fuck out of it, because their only motive is profit and they will toss aside any students who don't do well enough to actually produce toward that goal.

Salon.com has had a good series of articles about education in the US, and this interview with Diane Ravitch should be required reading in any discussion of the school system.

[Simon_Jester]

You however talk about not "subsidize unlimited higher education" and that "the state could gauge which people it's not worth spending taxpayer dollars to put through college". And that's why I call it a replay of the "welfare queen" obsession. Yes, there will always be a few idiots who abuse the system. But the answer is not to limit the supply of resources as first and only approach but to accept that any system will produce some outliers.

You are misunderstanding me.

I don't care about 1-in-1000 outliers. My point is that we cannot afford free tertiary education for everyone, at least not in the US where right now such education is ruinously expensive. There isn't enough money for everyone, so we need to apply some kind of discretion. Means-testing should be in place. Students with poor grades, poor high school attendance, or a poor disciplinary record in high school should be vetted very carefully before the state plunks down tens of thousands of dollars to provide them with an education (assuming they make it into any colleges to begin with).

It may be my work environment, but I am all too aware that there are people in this world who will NOT use educational opportunities effectively- and once they reach a certain point, dig in their heels far enough... you cannot educate them against their will and it's a waste of thousands of dollars to try.

If you compare the US school system to a tree, it is shedding leaves and bark, rot, fungus and all kinds of other maladies have set in through failure by design and mismanagement. It's just a matter of time before something in the main trunk cracks and it comes crashing down.

I am a squirrel in that tree. Believe me, I am intimately familiar with all that is going on here, and I pretty much agree with you.

You'd need to actually tear the whole edifice down and rebuild it from the ground up, equalize funding between districts, get rid of the standardized tests and the teaching to the test to secure funds bullshit and a myriad other things, and keep the private sector right the fuck out of it, because their only motive is profit and they will toss aside any students who don't do well enough to actually produce toward that goal.

Private educations for good students wouldn't be such a problem, except that it leaves the residuum of bad students stuck in public schools that rapidly devolve into something more like a free-range insane asylum.

And I haven't read Ravitch's interviews, but I HAVE read her book.

[Simon_Jester]

Let me add to that:

Looking at Common Core (the US's new-wave curriculum), there really is nothing fundamentally wrong with it except one thing: it'd work a lot better in a school system where the norm was that if kids flunk Grade X they are not automatically promoted to Grade X+1 to flunk the next class.

The OTHER problem with Common Core, of course, is that it's a bit insensitive to kids who come into the school without the background skills it assumes. Either because you're a kindergartener who wasn't raised to know the things they expect you to know...

Or because you're a perfectly normal student in a school system where, say, the actual lessons you got in 8th grade math last year wasn't nearly as rigorous as the one Common Core has... and now they're expecting you to know what Common Core would theoretically have taught you. Or, for that matter, because you're in a struggling school where violent time-wasting morons are sucking instructional time out of the day and the kids don't take notes and can't reading-comprehension their way through a word problem, so they just don't learn even if you do teach the relevant material.

It's a decent curriculum, and what I've seen of the tests designed around it is not bad- IF we can figure out how to actually teach the material. The challenge, and Ravitch has pretty much identified this, is that while basically average kids can be taught to master this content... the numerous low-income and disabled students in America will have a much much harder time making the grade. If anything it'll be worse because the Common Core-based tests are harder and make higher demands of students' reading skills and ability to master complex problems.

[mr friendly guy]

If anyone is interested, apparently she has now moved back in with her family. So the differences has been settled for now.

[Replicant]

Indirectly, they should pay. The state should pay for all higher education and there should be a tax on parents that would help pay for this.

Also, the state should pay for contraception and provide free abortions. The amount we would save in other forms of welfare and the crime reduction would probably make up for the costs. I know this would never happen, but this is how it should be.

You mean like Greece where all higher education is paid for by the government? Yeah that does not work, Greece is buried in debt and has close to the lowest graduation rate for higher education, if not the lowest, in all of Europe.

If you want to fix the problem then do something to reign in the costs of college. Costs even at an affordable school easily shoot well above $10,000 (actually $10k is a laughably low number to even consider) a year and that is not counting room and meals if you live in a dorm. Classes easily have 20 or more students per class. You have to wonder what the colleges are spending all the money on, especially at some schools where its $30k - $60k per year. I know your not paying every professor $500k a year to teach.

[Elheru Aran]

If you want to fix the problem then do something to reign in the costs of college. Costs even at an affordable school easily shoot well above $10,000 (actually $10k is a laughably low number to even consider) a year and that is not counting room and meals if you live in a dorm. Classes easily have 20 or more students per class. You have to wonder what the colleges are spending all the money on, especially at some schools where its $30k - $60k per year. I know your not paying every professor $500k a year to teach.

Yeah, that's a whole other can of worms right there...

Before they get to college, they have to perform in secondary school and show potential for success in higher education. That's one of the biggest problems in the US right now; substandard kids are being directed to college and induced to spend enormous amounts of money they don't have, when perhaps they would be better served directing their energies elsewhere, or the schools could do a better job of preparing them for college.

[Simon_Jester]

Indirectly, they should pay. The state should pay for all higher education and there should be a tax on parents that would help pay for this.

Also, the state should pay for contraception and provide free abortions. The amount we would save in other forms of welfare and the crime reduction would probably make up for the costs. I know this would never happen, but this is how it should be.

You mean like Greece where all higher education is paid for by the government? Yeah that does not work, Greece is buried in debt and has close to the lowest graduation rate for higher education, if not the lowest, in all of Europe.

If you want to fix the problem then do something to reign in the costs of college. Costs even at an affordable school easily shoot well above $10,000 (actually $10k is a laughably low number to even consider) a year and that is not counting room and meals if you live in a dorm. Classes easily have 20 or more students per class. You have to wonder what the colleges are spending all the money on, especially at some schools where its $30k - $60k per year. I know your not paying every professor $500k a year to teach.

There are a lot of upkeep expenses involved in maintaining a functional campus with large libraries and research facilities. Graduate student staff are a net cost if a relatively small one, too.

[Elheru Aran]

If you want to fix the problem then do something to reign in the costs of college. Costs even at an affordable school easily shoot well above $10,000 (actually $10k is a laughably low number to even consider) a year and that is not counting room and meals if you live in a dorm. Classes easily have 20 or more students per class. You have to wonder what the colleges are spending all the money on, especially at some schools where its $30k - $60k per year. I know your not paying every professor $500k a year to teach.

There are a lot of upkeep expenses involved in maintaining a functional campus with large libraries and research facilities. Graduate student staff are a net cost if a relatively small one, too.

To add to Simon, you can also look at:

--Faculty pay and benefits, especially tenured. It does add up especially once some of the tenured faculty start getting into their senior years (insurance costs go up).

--Keeping up to date with scientific and technical equipment. It isn't cheap to, for example, even keep an art studio supplied. You can defray this (especially in art) to some degree by having students pay for their own stuff, but other things like computers, engineering equipment, lab equipment, etc? Nope. That's straight on to the school.

--In most colleges that aren't tech universities above the community level... athletics. Paying coaches, assistants, etc. Building and maintaining premises for athletic events and practice. Etc. This is probably up to 50%, if not far more, of the budget of most big-name schools largely due to things like licensing fees for broadcasting and what not, but coaches' salaries in the major sports are definitely up there. Meanwhile, the players get a pat on the head and their papers written for them...

--Merchandising. There's a lot of money that goes into advertising. Any college worth its salt will have at least one gift shop, if not several. Even the little community colleges will have a place you can buy T-shirts or bumper stickers. Don't forget all the money that's spent on "open days" or whatever where the parents come to visit and tons of free bags of goodies are handed out. Visits from prospective students-- here's a T-shirt, let's go eat on campus, it's on us... Etc.

--Just paying the bills. This does fall under Simon's point on upkeep, but to elaborate: You are talking about, at the very least, several large buildings' worth of electricity, water, and sewerage, plus possibly gas. Also probably fancy TV service. Also Internet-- both wired and wireless. Simply making sure all the non-faculty employees (maintenance, admin, food service, campus police) are paid. This goes all the way up to the scale of "small town".

--Campus police. Uniforms, cars, weapons, facilities. This is more of a thing at the bigger schools, though, so it's by no means universal. Still a significant cost.

--Oh, and last (on my list anyway) but not least-- food service. Pretty much every college will have at least a little convenience shop on campus where hungry students can grab something on their way to classes. Community colleges won't have much-- vending machines, maybe-- but they may have some franchise or other on campus. As schools scale upward, you'll see a cafeteria, going on up to several eating options ranging from tray-in-line production food service facilities, to top-line restaurants staffed by the best of the culinary-arts students.

So, all those costs are more or less legitimate (the 'more or less' is due mainly to the cost of athletics and merchandising).

The main reason that the final cost to the students themselves is so high is ultimately the scale that things have gotten to. With the undue emphasis on going to college being placed upon high school students, it's gotten to the point where something like... say... 60-70% of high school students go to college once they graduate (this is a guess). This is a LOT of people. Thus, bigger facilities, more staff, more teachers, more police, more equipment, hell, even more trucks' worth of food every day. Considering that a large number of these students will eventually wash out and be replaced with even more students, the cost only keeps growing.

Best way to slash costs? Reduce the size of colleges. Do this by making it clear to students that college is *not* their only option. Give them other ways toward gainful employment in skilled jobs and trades. Make college just a tad more 'elite' (for lack of a better word). Make it so that, say, 40-50% of high school graduates go to college.

There is this social expectation, though, that you can't make anything of yourself without a college degree, that you HAVE to go to college to get any kind of meaningful job and make a living. I'm not sure when all this happened, but it's crippling education in the US.

[aerius]

And an update:

Looks like daddy was right about her boyfriend. Such a charming young man <sarc>

CBS news link

NJ teen who sued parents gets restraining order against boyfriend

MORRISTOWN, N.J. - Rachel Canning, a New Jersey teen who previously made headlines when she sued to get her parents to support her after she moved out of their home, was back in court Wednesday. This time, she was able to obtain a restraining order against her boyfriend, reports the Star-Ledger.

Canning, 18, of Lincoln Park, obtained the temporary restraining order against her boyfriend, 18-year-old Lucas Kitzmiller, according to the paper.

The Daily Record reports Canning's father says his daughter alleges she was choked by Kitzmiller during a dispute Sunday in Mine Hill.

Kitzmiller also reportedly obtained a temporary restraining order against Canning on Wednesday.

Rachel Canning, a high school honor student, first made the news after she moved out of her parents' home on Oct. 30, two days before she turned 18, and later filed a lawsuit against them seeking child support, private school tuition and payment of her college tuition.

She argued in the lawsuit that her parents were abuse, contributed to an eating disorder she developed and pushed her to get a basketball scholarship.

Her parents, retired Lincoln Park police Chief Sean Canning and his wife, Elizabeth, disputed those claims, saying in court filings that their daughter voluntarily left home because she didn't want to abide by reasonable household rules, such as being respectful, keeping a curfew, doing a few chores and ending a relationship with Kitzmiller, who her parents said was a bad influence.

After moving out of her parents' home, Canning moved in with the family of her best friend. The friend's father, former Morris County Freeholder John Inglesino, was paying for the teen's lawsuit against her parents.

In March, Canning dropped the suit against her parents and moved back in with them.

The teen is set to begin college at Western New England University in Springfield, Mass. in the fall, reports the Star-Ledger.

[ArmorPierce]

This is more of a comment on general education reform, but in the modern world, I wonder whether or not we ought to expand our current high school education diploma requirements.

Would it simply be better to tack on an additional two years to high school, wherein they could cover ground in the entry level of college-tier mathematics, science, and humanities. I would prefer to make a high school degree worth more than 'barely good enough', and make university degrees that much harder to get, which would hopefully make them rarer and drive their value up.

When you hear about university-level degrees being sought after for entry-level secretarial positions, my impression is that you've added nothing but a 'much spend this much money to have a career' barrier to life.

My opinion has been and remains that this is because our high schools are not meritocratic enough. We work very hard to push students through high school, even if they have no particular wish to get that diploma. As a result, having the diploma says a lot less than it should about your intelligence, attitude, competence, responsibility, and aptitude for complex work.

If there were a realistic chance of getting expelled from high school for being an intolerable git or an unmotivated blob, then the diploma would be worth more. Both because it would actually distinguish meaningfully between graduates and nongraduates, and because teachers now preoccupied with their lowest-performing students would have more time and resources to devote to raising the average level of education.

Spend all your time trying to make sure no one is left behind, and you are unlikely to get very far very fast.

If you compare the US school system to a tree, it is shedding leaves and bark, rot, fungus and all kinds of other maladies have set in through failure by design and mismanagement. It's just a matter of time before something in the main trunk cracks and it comes crashing down.

You'd need to actually tear the whole edifice down and rebuild it from the ground up, equalize funding between districts, get rid of the standardized tests and the teaching to the test to secure funds bullshit and a myriad other things, and keep the private sector right the fuck out of it, because their only motive is profit and they will toss aside any students who don't do well enough to actually produce toward that goal.

Salon.com has had a good series of articles about education in the US, and this interview with Diane Ravitch should be required reading in any discussion of the school system.

What exactly is wrong with standardized tests? If you are trying to standarize district to district funding and assuming district to district education I would think that you would want more standardized tests. It is an objective measure of performance.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, since I'm still a teacher like I was when this was discussed four months ago...

1) Having too frequent standardized tests is bad for education because the kids spend a lot of their time testing instead of learning. School year before last, my kids spent about nine school-days out of 90 (they saw me every other day) taking various state and county-mandated tests. Many of which were (to avoid tampering and cheating) 'secure' tests that I could not use effectively as tools for review after the fact.

As a matter of common sense, if kids spend 10% of their time taking demoralizing standardized tests, where their teachers are obviously powerless to affect the timing or content, they will learn at least 10% less than they would otherwise.

2) In quite a few cases the standardized tests do not align well with what a teacher would want to teach their students to maximize the amount that they learn. If your students are below grade level, a test that is at grade level may be totally beyond them, no matter how hard they try.

3) High performance on standardized tests requires very specific problem-solving skills that have little to do with the content they purport to test. For example, you have to be good at eliminating wrong answers on multiple-choice tests... which is not taught in any one class. You have to be good at identifying what kinds of problems you can and cannot solve under time pressure... which, likewise, is not a specific subject taught in any specific part of the school curriculum.

While you can argue that "does this child know basic logic" is an important part of their education, you can't very well blame the absence of basic reasoning skills on any one teacher, or even any one school for older children. Especially since few if any jurisdictions endorse actually taking time out to formally teach students logical reasoning skills as such.

There are other arguments against standardized tests, but let's keep it to a manageable number at one time, shall we?