In Utah, 12th Grade Optional
Posted
February 19, 2010 at
6:43 am by
Kris
In an effort to save money, State Senator Chris Buttars of Utah has proposed making 12th grade optional. Your last year of high school, optional.
He said eliminating 12th grade altogether would have saved $102 million.
If given the option to skip 12th grade that would save something like $60 million. Utah is certainly a state that could use some cuts here and there (especially when their state deficit runs to the tune of $700 million) , but I’m not sure cutting out 12th grade-cutting education- is the answer.
Are kids really ready to forgo Senior year? J. D. Williams doesn’t think so-
J.D. Williams, student body president at West Jordan High School in Utah, told the Los Angeles Times that he’s against the plan.
“I need this year,” Williams said. “My parents are against it… All the teachers at the school are against it. I’m against it.”
Utah also wants to put ads on school buses to combat the state’s debt.
Neither idea is going over so well.
On cutting 12th grade:
“It is very shortsighted,” John Balden, president of the Utah chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, told ABC News. “Students don’t just play in 12th grade. They really do study. In higher education we find an awful lot of students unprepared for college. Twelfth grade is really a necessary grade.”
Many students actually use 12th grade to get everything in place and are thankful for the benefits the extra time provides.
What happens if Senior year gets the axe?
Tags: high-school, Senator Buttars, Senior year optional, Utah |
6 Responses to “In Utah, 12th Grade Optional”
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Leave a comment
Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately in an effort to remove commercial messages, irrelevancies, excessive foul language, racist/sexist/hateful comments, spoofed/cloaked IPs and/or personal attacks and will be edited/deleted at our discretion. Thank you for your patience.
1. Prescott
February 19, 2010 @ 6:32 pm
What college admissions office is going to take a kid that’s only had 3 years of high school? I could have not gone to senior year of H.S., but not because I would “skip” it, but because I already had the required amount of credits. Apparently Buttars changed his original proposal to be something more like that (real progressive, since I graduated H.S. over 20 years ago), what a dolt to not think that up in the first place.
Hey Buttars, why not just eliminate H.S. entirely? You’ll probably save almost a billion dollars then!
2. KrisUnderwood
February 19, 2010 @ 8:03 pm
Good point about college. I actually saw this Buttars guy in an interview. He doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. So disconnected from everything. And not in a good way.
3. mully
February 19, 2010 @ 8:50 pm
So in a country whose educational system is ranked near the bottom of the world’s richest countries, this idiot thinks his idea makes sense?
4. Summer
February 21, 2010 @ 8:12 pm
Why is it spending one million dollars to study Mormon crickets? Wasn’t the state in the top dozen last year for pork barrel spending?
5. Delhi University
March 2, 2010 @ 12:27 pm
Many students actually use 12th grade to get everything in place and are thankful for the benefits the extra time provides.
6. From Ontario
March 27, 2010 @ 5:47 am
I’m a university professor originally from Ontario where Grade 13 was cut only a few years ago. I wish it hadn’t been, and I wish every other province and state added it. I can tell you from my experience in the university classroom that high school students need *more* education, not less. I am quite honestly regularly shocked at the limited writing, reading, thinking, and research skills that the students in my classes exhibit. And we’re presumably getting only the *best* high school students admitted into our institution!