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1/2 students quit after the first year. 1/2 those left over never complete. yeah it works. the reason we have the modern schooling system is because most apes of our species are not meant for school or jobs. it's a way of training them for both.

> 1/2 students quit after the first year. 1/2 those left over never complete.

For what reasons though?

I am advocating a more community college model, smaller introductory class sizes, with a faster paced, but shorter term curriculums, that don't hurt as much if any one particular course is failed. A more targeted model than "grade level".

Traditional universities have a high attrition rate not just due to course work, there is a huge cultural shift, a complete loss of one's traditional support network, a lack of structure that used to be imposed by parents, and many new opportunities for distraction.

I'm not proposing we add any of that to high school! :)

let's go to a model that we know works

I'm all for doing what works. What data tend to show that college education works better than secondary education or primary education? (For a demonstration of having received a college education, what data tend to show THE OPPOSITE, which all thinking people have to consider when deciding what policies to support?) I note that you say that your model might not work for grade school. If so, is there something else we can do at the margins to improve primary education by a little or by a lot?

> If so, is there something else we can do at the margins to improve primary education by a little or by a lot?

One thing we have done that is completely backwards is mainstreaming class rooms, for both special needs and gifted students.

I remember when I was in 1st grade, students who read a little bit slower where in a different reading group from students who read at normal speed versus students who read above expectation.

Students would get pulled out per curriculum type to different classes.

This continued in middle school, where there were 4 levels of math class (remedial, normal, and two levels of advanced), 2 levels of English and 2 levels of history. (The special needs program was separate, and I am not sure how remedial English or History worked)

This type of system works, but it is more costly and harder to manage if we treat it as a "one off".

I had this basic system in high school, although it was semesters. You had to make sure that the courses you wanted were available, made more difficult for me because I decided to finish a 5 year program in 4 years (we went up to grade 13 back then). Note that this was in Canada.

The college model has a forced failure system. The competition model should have no place in educating children who will become working, tax paying, and voting adult citizens.

> The college model has a forced failure system.

Only at the upper tiers of elite universities.

Most large universities also have their intro courses taught in huge lecture halls with 100+ students. Yeah that system fails, so don't do it.

But take the good parts. Small focused targeted quarterly classes that students can retake if they fail.

Having classes that last an entire school year (or even half a school year) is overkill.

I also like that with the quarter system in college, students typically take three 5-credit classes. That is 3 hours of instructional time per day, which at a good pace in class, is about the max an average person can learn.

With 6 hours of class instructional time, teachers have to "burn" some of that time so students don't burn out. I could not imagine sitting through 6 hours of college lectures per day, it'd be insane, because every minute spent in class is productive.

Compare that to High School, where students spend a LOT of time on busy work, or watching films, or reading entire chapters of a book out loud.

Want a recipe for success? Make a class schedule that is the equivalent of 15 college credits per quarter. 3 hours of lecture per day, intersperse lectures with dedicated study time, let students immediately apply what they just learned to solve problems.

Students will get to learn more per class, and have better adherence to homework policies.

I'm referring to "the curve" when I say forced failure. Grading models at public and private universities require that x% of students receive a failing grade. The goal is not to teach the student to be knowledgeable of subject X but to rather weed out those who do not cross a subjective proficiency threshold.

> I'm referring to "the curve" when I say forced failure. Grading models at public and private universities require that x% of students receive a failing grade. The goal is not to teach the student to be knowledgeable of subject X but to rather weed out those who do not cross a subjective proficiency threshold.

This varies by university and department.

In theory you should always have a performance curve if you have a large enough sample size.

This does not mean that 1 standard deviation away has to fail.

It does mean that some students will do better than others. You can set performance targets however you want, if we desire to create an education system that supports students so that -2σ can still perform at a competent level, well you have a system that supports 97.6% of students. (Although I'd actually say that performance target is somewhat unrealistic for a country in which only a mid 80% of students currently graduate high school.)

Universities don't have the resources, time, or motivation, to educate 97% of the population, so they are going to put policies in place such as "more than -1σ and you fail out".

There is no need to employ that en-masse to all education!

We had a variant of this system where I went to school. It was enjoyable as it yielded a lot of free time and autonomy (even if taking an above average number of classes) but it's hard to say whether it had any meaningful impact on overall student performance. My school district was also reasonably wealthy, so there weren't a lot of people failing out or performing very poorly to begin with.

Actually, the world has a quite good data on what works for training. The FAA has very clear standards as to how classes teaching aviation information should be structured.