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Comment by darkerside | Hacker News Reader

This seems like a great way to kill the public secondary school system. What percentage of kids do you estimate would stop going to class under this model?

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I went to a high school that had a college-like schedule with the campus covering a few buildings in downtown (small city). Attendance wasn't mandatory, grades were exam/deliverable based.

The freedom was great for high-achievers. Normal students showed up to classes like normal. Almost-dropouts didn't go to class and waste everyone's time (eventually they were transferred to regular high-school).

I learned valuable life-lessons compared to the hand-holding and babysitting done in other high schools, and highly recommend the model.

I'm not surprised by this at all. I just wonder what the percentages of each roughly defined category is. I'll also point out that, in your case, there were fallback alternatives. If all high schools operated this way, what's the fallback?

Thanks for sharing. I'd be interested to read more about the program.

Make attendance mandatory and create some comfortable spaces for in-between classes.

Attendance is mandatory already. This will just make it easier for kids to leave. In fact, they'll be coming and going all the time. Isn't that the whole point?

How would it make it easier? the rules for attendance would be the same. It is already fairly easy to skip school, especially if there is an open lunch or you can forge a parental note. You can also set up classes in a way that doesnt allow for more than 30-60 minutes between classes, allowing relaxation in common areas and the library, for example. Or allow more freedom as kids age.

Just because it is "more like college" doesnt mean it is an exact replica.

We all know that the same teenagers that want to sneak out of their houses at night to go on their escapades (typically 2:1 supervision) would totally follow the rules of mandatory attendance (40:1 supervision )

Then in what sense is QML’s proposal worse than the status quo?

To be fair, I snuck out from time to time and rarely missed school. Those things dont really go together like you imply. Missing school has totally different consequences and besides, I never really found school useless. I even took AP classes.

Some kids skip school. I did... twice in my school career. I imagine some kids would still skip school, but there is no real reason to think it would be higher than it is now.

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