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Some rigorous, 4-year colleges will take 16 year olds as freshmen. The best one is Simon's Rock College which exists solely for that purpose. One can get a good overview of other institutions that have related programs.

I went to Simon's Rock for two years and afterwards attended a top-10 ranked university for two years. I think most students who care strongly about academics could benefit from starting college early, and if they went to Simon's Rock they would get better teaching and better peers than at said highly ranked university. (The university is much better in the area of research.)

High schools (and schools in general) do need an update. For an illustration, I will provide this advertisement:

Simon's Rock College of Bard exclusively admits younger students who have not completed their high school education. Many alumni go on to become scientists, activists, etc. Ever heard of MoveOn.org PAC? It was started by a Simon's Rock student. I personally have had great success at Simon's Rock. I have avoided wasting two years in a high school that did not offer advanced classes. Generally, I would describe Simon's Rock as a top quality liberal arts college. It is true, though, that early college is not for everyone.

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has funded a program at Simon's Rock to teach teachers who will later work in new early college programs the foundation is setting up.

If you think about it, there are many features of our education system that date back to Plato, at least. I do not claim to know how to perfect education, but I do claim that it is time to try some changes.

Off topic: Usually pronouns that are not at the beginning of sentences are only capitalized when they refer to deities. And yes, I love Linux and hate Microsoft software.

High schools (and schools in general) do need an update. For an illustration, I will provide this advertisement:

Simon's Rock College of Bard exclusively admits younger students who have not completed their high school education. Many alumni go on to become scientists, activists, etc. Ever heard of MoveOn.org PAC? It was started by a Simon's Rock student. I personally have had great success at Simon's Rock. I have avoided wasting two years in a high school that did not offer advanced classes. Generally, I would describe Simon's Rock as a top quality liberal arts college. It is true, though, that early college is not for everyone.

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has funded a program at Simon's Rock to teach teachers who will later work in new early college programs the foundation is setting up.

If you think about it, there are many features of our education system that date back to Plato, at least. I do not claim to know how to perfect education, but I do claim that it is time to try some changes.

Off topic: Usually pronouns that are not at the beginning of sentences are only capitalized when they refer to deities. And yes, I love Linux and hate Microsoft software.

Goodlad's suggestions are much more varried and complex than "streaming is bad." And for the most part he backs up his recommendations with data. Something educators almost never do. I can see you are a concerned teacher; you should read the book. Many of Goodlad's ideas would require somewhat impractical infrastructure changes, but there may be some things you could find interesting. He talks a lot about using higher performing students to help the lower performing students improve. He definitely does not advocate teaching to the lowest common denominator.

I, personally, was always bored in "high level" classes in middle and high school. I found the other students in those classes were usually more wealthy than motivated, and tried to hide what intelligence they had. I skipped two years of high school and went on to Simon's Rock College where I've found everyone is a good student, and there is no need to divide people up. Your milage may vary, but I've found that the quality of education is more about the culture and environment in which education takes place than about "Intelligence," which was used to stream or track me.

Hume

figured that out more then 200 years ago.
Why is science always the last to figure things out?

In case you didn't get enough posts saying this already, I started out in college at 16 and it was one of the best choices of my life.

I went to college where everyone started out when they were 15 or 16. It's called Simon's Rock. Anyone who is still reading this old thread and is thinking about starting college early, go check it out.

My college gave me a shell account and dialup # I could use after I left.

US high schools are crucibles that grind students into conformity.

Students who are different are bullied mercilessly. I'd wager that most of them have at one time considered extreme violence as a way to avenge themselves. Fortunately, few have actually carried out their thoughts.

Some assimilate into the collective blandness, others find a place where individuality is respected.

Those who neither conform or escape often go on to greatness, achieving fame as well as the ability to sneer at the high school bully - now employed as a 7-11 cashier.

A few smart people go over the edge. The kids who killed in Colombine were certainlt intelligent. One of the most interesting/horrifying things about Colombine was listening to the football players and cheerleaders talk about how they picked on other kids because they weren't like themselves.

American high schools should not become minimum security prisons, but they shouldn't be places where child abuse (albeit by other children) is tolerated, either.

at Simon's Rock College, we had ethernet jacks in the lecture halls. The professors usually collected homework at the end of class, and instead of listening to the lecture, I would type my homework and print it to a network printer. The professors all loved me=)

-j

I just can't pass up the opportunity to plug my very own toolkit, ftTK. ftTK was my senior thesis, a library with intended support for Xlib, Win32, and Mac OS, as well as anything else I feel like adding later. Unfortunately, ftTK is currently pretty much useless, since it doesn't yet handle user input in any sort of consistent way, and many, many other things are still non-existant. Someday....

I just can't pass up the opportunity to plug my very own toolkit, ftTK. ftTK was my senior thesis, a library with intended support for Xlib, Win32, and Mac OS, as well as anything else I feel like adding later. Unfortunately, ftTK is currently pretty much useless, since it doesn't yet handle user input in any sort of consistent way, and many, many other things are still non-existant. Someday....

The girl who committed suicide went by the alias "eriss" and "x-error" and "DarkRaven" on IRC. Her real name was Cheryl and she used to hang out in #depression back in April/May of 1999. She went to Simon's Rock College for a little while until the school found out she tried to kill herself so they sent her back home (Honolulu, Hawaii). It's sad she had to get attached so quickly to an IRC dork like icee, but she was an extremely depressed little girl. Oh well.. If you want more details talk to ObsidianZ, Kobi_, `6, or any of the other long-time regulars of #depression on EFNet IRC. One of the ops/regs should still have logs of her last words on the channel before she jumped...

Last year a friend of mine did his thesis in robotics. He built an "amoebot", which was basically a hexagon with three motors which, by changing the shape of the hexagon could redistribute its weight and roll forward.

He only had time to build a couple proof-of-concept prototypes, so they're not nearly as slick looking as S5, but still pretty nifty when you think about how it works. His second model would scan for a light source and move towards it. He's got some pics and movies on his homepage.

I hear from a lot of people about how much high school sucked for them. That seems to be one of the main themes in the comments here. Something I'm not seeing a lot of though is this: It doesn't have to be that bad.
There are a few ways to escape the ridicule and humiliation that sometimes go with being a high school student and being different, one of which I was lucky enough to find. A small college in Massachusetts called Simon's Rock accepts the majority of its students after 10th and 11th grade. It's a great experience, because a lot of the students who apply do so because they don't feel like they fit in at high school. The community is pretty understanding and very accepting of differences, so being weird is the norm. I'm now completing my junior year at Simon's Rock, and I think the best decision I've ever made in my life was to come here. And the past few weeks have only reinforced that, for everybody I know that wears a trenchcoat or dresses all in black or plays Quake every night is still doing so, without a peep from the administration.
*shameless plug* and it's still not too late to apply for next year *end plug*