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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
5 year highschool
Somebody help me out here, talk to me about the LePage 5 year highschool. I am admittedly an idiot about this. The only thing I know about highschool is that I went, it was not that hard, and I graduated after 4 years.
Will it affect college for these kids, as most states have 4 year highschools? Like would credit requirements be drasticly different? Im assuming this is going to cost a lot of money, because we are keeping every child in Maine in school for another year, and we would have to add new teachers, supplies, bus transportation for the kids, new courses, curriculum for those courses, ect.
TTM, tell me what you think the pros and cons are hear. I would like to be educated on the subject 
Re: 5 year highschool
As someone who works in a high school that has so few required credits that you can graduate within 3 years, the idea of going to 5 is insane to me. Force schools to increase credit requirements to better utilize the time we have now and support the schools financially so that they can offer enough classes so a kid doesn't have to spend half their day in study halls because every class is full.
*phew*
Sorry. It's been a hellish week.
Yeah, I had all my credits before I started my senior year. I needed to stay my senior year because I needed an English credit (you need 4, one for each year), and the rest of my classes were just extra stuff I had 3 periods of study hall, out of seven. I dont really see what they are going to do with that extra year.
So how many credits exactly does it take to get a diploma in Maine?
IIRC, when I graduated from high school I had to have 25 credits. I think there was a lower level diploma that could be gotten with 21 credits but I'm pretty sure you still needed 4 years of English classes so you would have had to go to summer school to graduate early.
my understanding is that it will some how incorporate the community college system and that kids will graduate with both a hs diploma and 30 credits towards an associates degree.
craaaaazycakes......
I haven't looked into this proposal enough yet and I don't know what the financial implications would be, if any, but I'm not sure it's a completely bad idea. I got pretty good grades in high school and was ready academically for college, but I certainly was not ready for the level of responsibility with my support system (aka my amazing mother and family) being somewhat far away. I made quite a few mistakes my freshman year that I really wish I could reverse. And I know that college is supposed to be a learning experience and you're supposed to learn from your mistakes, but I made some doozies. Maybe an extra year wouldn't have made that much of a difference, but not all kids are truly ready for college when they go. A lot of kids are still 17 when they start college ( I think of the little guys who are starting Kindergarten at 4 years old - still babies!!!) My niece was 17, has ADD, and my brother and SIL sent her to Georgia from Mass for college! Needless to say, she was home for a year the following year and is now attending a different college in New Hampshire . Maybe that extra year in high school would've helped her be more prepared. Maybe if that 5th year focused a lot on the prep for college and those credits went towards university/college credits like Glitzy mentioned, I can see it being really beneficial. But I also think it shouldn't have to be mandatory. After all, not all kids go to college and have different paths they want to pursue. Or some are more ready than others to begin after 4 years. But would that eliminate the need for prep schools like Bridgton? My husband attended Bridgton, not being ready for college (and he had just turned 18), and it played a significant role in his life. He speaks very highly of his experiences there. It'll be interesting to see what the details are with this. Are there ANY 5 year high schools in our country? Or in any other country for that matter?
I just started looking into this, so I don't know much, but it sounds like he is proposing a 5 year high school program where students graduate with an associates degree. The reasoning is that a large percentage of students need to take remedial courses at the college level because they aren't properly prepared. This is true, but doesn't apply to all students and I'm not sure this is the way to fix it. I'm also not sure if the 5 year program would be required of all students?
As a high school guidance counselor, I see a huge number of students that meet the majority of the requirements in 3 years and only "need" 1-2 credits senior year. But these generally aren't the ones that will need remediation at the college level; these are the students who are already enrolling in college and AP classes during senior year and are academically well prepared for college, so keeping them for a 5th year may not be helpful. It may be socially and developmentally, but I don't think many students/parents would realize this.
The students who are in need of remediation when they get to college often struggle so much to reach graduation I worry that adding a 5th year, while it could potentially make them more college ready, would increase the drop out rate in high school by making graduation seem more unachievable.
Of course this 5 year idea also sounds like a logiestical nightmare to me! Where would students take these college courses? Who would teach them? How would they be funded? What would the implications be for college admissions?
dup
I worry about the bolded also. It is hard for kids who struggle academically, and most of the time those are the kids with little support at home. They are the kids most likely to drop out when faced with yet another year of school to complete.
Your last paragraph is the thing that is foremost in my mind. If our kids are graduating high school with an associates degree, do they have to pay for it? Will it be state funded? Where are all these college level teachers coming from and how much his it going to cost to set all this up? What about college after the 5 year highschool? Are all colleges, in every state, going to acknowledge the credits these kids have earned toward an associates degree in highschool? It seems like there are some pros here, but a lot of cons and a lot of red tape to wade through.
If they really want kids to get college credits while in high school, why don't they expand the AP or IB class offerings? It's an already established system that works pretty well. (Back in the day, I went off to college with 24 credits from AP exams.) Of course, the kids who need remedial reading and math instruction aren't the ones signing up for these kinds of classes anyway.