If everyone had a flat 5.0, we’d probably just round everything to the nearest whole number or a .5 increment. But since these tiny decimals represent an overall GPA average, you end up with someone who occasionally pulled a B instead of an A. Honestly, I feel like this article is pretty superficial and likely inaccurate.
Just looking at the math, if a student gets one B in PE every year through all four years of high school, while maintaining straight As in everything else, they’d end up with 19.65 points from their general GPA and 60 points from core subjects. That puts their average at 79.65, which then gets added to whatever points they earn from entrance exams, competitions, or sports...
mellowskipper said:87 points . Talk about overachievers. I mean—this is honestly a whole new level of ridiculousness
The PM track at University I has actually been using entrance exams for years now, and honestly, getting in there is tougher than getting into Scripps Institution of Oceanography since they only take about 26 students per year. So, that whole thing about having a potential 10-point cushion from an entrance exam? It just doesn't hold up
I mean, sure, three months off sounds like a dream, but let’s be honest—the pay just doesn't hold up when you compare it to what someone with actual tech skills can pull in on the US job market.
And honestly, this has been an issue for years. Moving to that integrated five-year degree program probably just made things worse. I’m not entirely sure what they were thinking, designing a curriculum that nobody wanted in the first place back when it was only four years. Now, trying to make teaching even less attractive than it already was by extending it? It just doesn't make sense...
Regarding that point about the STEM teacher shortage mentioned in the Telegram article concerning the 2021/22 Quote freshman enrollment numbers:
When you look at programs that saw only a single freshman enroll, we really need to take a closer look at the Physics and Computer Science tracks and the Physics and Chemistry track over at the University of Chicago. Even though those first two had capacities of 32 and 22 respectively, both ended up with just one student enrolled.
Susan James said:Well, that’s what I wrote—the entrance exams have a three-day window 🤷
I know some kids end up taking two tests on the same day, but honestly, it doesn't seem impossible to me. These are top-tier students who are incredibly driven to get into a prestigious prep school... they can handle two tests in one day or five in a week if they have to. The stress is mostly for the parents.
As for those testing tomorrow, they've already had plenty of practice with these types of problems. 🤣
Looking at the scores, there aren't many hitting above an 8. If you're looking for a perfect 10, you'll basically be hunting for a needle in a haystack. 🤷 But seeing so many scoring in the 5 to 7 range actually looks pretty good to me. It should help balance out a B in a less critical subject or maybe make up for extra credit earned through swimming or table tennis competitions. Actually, just like they mentioned, if two students end up with the exact same score, the tiebreaker goes to whoever performed better on the entrance exam itself. 🤔
Actually, it’s four days, not three. Beyond just the stress levels, you also have to deal with the logistics of showing up early—like, by 1:00 PM. You get in, finish your paperwork, head out, grab a quick bite to eat, and then you're scrambling to cross town to be somewhere else by 1:00 PM again. It’s tough. If you don't have parents helping you out with transportation, it can feel almost impossible, especially when you factor in how unpredictable traffic can be or if there's construction messing up the subway lines.
Comparing the high-stakes pressure of an admissions interview—which basically decides where you'll spend the next four years—to the stress of a single subject test that you can almost always retake or make up later? Honestly, it's not even a fair comparison.
Personally, I don't think this data tells us much. A lot of students just select "General Studies" as a fallback option—it covers them whether they end up in a language academy or a specialized prep school. Plus, there's always a huge group of kids who genuinely want the general track, which naturally inflates those numbers. As for the specialized prep schools, having these entrance exams might have discouraged some interested applicants. But honestly, looking back, the old way was even more chaotic. Having schedules scattered all over town on different days meant kids were constantly racing against the clock. If you didn't have a parent who could take a day off work to drive them from one side of the city to the other, you were basically stuck. This is exactly why I argued that we should move toward a "one exam per school" model rather than this universal testing system that feels like a mini-SAT marathon.
And honestly, if everyone just keeps playing this game, we’re going to end up commissioning some massive five-year integrated study to decide whether middle schoolers should be learning basic physics through friction and torque, or just solving two simple algebraic equations for a couple of bucks. Then, everyone will act shocked when there aren't enough teachers left in the country. But there’s no other way to do it because being an educator is a regulated profession, and those regulations are about as unchangeable as the laws of gravity.
On top of that, there is this fascinating psychological aspect at play here: people love to talk down to and belittle those who didn't need some lecture from an ivory tower academic to master a craft and perform it at a world-class level.
You really need to tell the labor market to stop inflating the demand for developers while simultaneously capping their salaries at what a physics professor makes. I mean, think about it—to become a physics professor, you’re looking at five years of intensive graduate school plus a license, yet you have senior developers who basically just watched a few YouTube tutorials and decided they were experts 👍
And while you're at it, maybe let the corporations know they shouldn't be swapping out managers like they're on an assembly line. Those people are actually quite hard to come by once you find someone decent
On the topic of the College of Science—of course those enrollment quotas aren't being met. It’s pretty simple math: there just aren't enough students out there, and why would anyone bother grinding through a nearly identical curriculum just to have "Professor" tacked onto their title at the end? Even if they do finish, let's be honest, everyone knows you can pull a great salary in the private sector without the teaching credential. I can personally guarantee that the average high school math or physics teacher doesn't need to spend five grueling years in a specialized pedagogy track. It feels totally misguided. Naturally, almost nobody signs up, and even when they do, they usually pivot to a better career path once they graduate. About 30 years ago, this track was mostly a fallback for students who couldn't quite clear the harder hurdles in an engineering major—you know, the heavy hitters like the IMF courses—so they'd switch over. Sometimes, though, they'd actually manage to pass those tough classes under a different professor and head back to engineering 😂 . If we opened three-year programs at community colleges with a more practical, streamlined curriculum designed for regular people, we might actually start solving the teacher shortage in these subjects.
Anthony Ward6 said:I'm not sure if you were replying to my previous post, but the person I used as an example was on a management contract—we're talking a salary in the tens of thousands of dollars, plus all the standard corporate perks and gear. She didn't leave because she lacked opportunity; she left because the stress was insane and she was essentially working 24/7.
Oh, I am very well acquainted with what a management contract looks like and those kinds of paychecks. Honestly, for every one of those roles out there, there are probably a hundred equally talented people just waiting in the wings, ready to jump in and kill themselves for that exact same money.
A senior developer can pull in that kind of salary while maintaining a normal 9-to-5, and companies will practically roll out the red carpet for them because they know a guy like that could easily jump ship to a massive tech firm or start his own freelance consultancy tomorrow. And finding a replacement? Forget about it. Any decent candidate could land the same—or even better—pay elsewhere right now. Add in the lack of niche expertise and that classic, frustrating "everything is documented in his head" situation, and you see the whole picture.
It’s a completely different league, though I suppose that’s a bit of a tangent...
I honestly feel that standard computer science curriculum could be taught by anyone who has completed a degree in a tech field along with some basic teaching credentials. We don't necessarily need MIT students for this. These are the fundamentals, after all. It’s likely that these kinds of specialized high schools will eventually become mostly private institutions where instructors can actually command a decent salary.
At the same time, public schools really need to realize they have to rethink their staffing model for these subjects. They should look for people who aren't looking for full-time roles, but rather those who genuinely want to teach—perhaps alongside a primary career. Think about someone working part-time because they love the classroom, or maybe a veteran in the industry who is over 50 and tired of constantly chasing the latest coding languages and industry buzzwords. They might prefer teaching half the week while keeping their consulting gigs on the side, especially if they are already financially stable.
The problem is that our school hiring system is incredibly bureaucratic, and let’s be honest, the office politics can be toxic. If someone walks in with noble intentions to shake things up, they often get shut down pretty quickly.
PS — You really can't compare the working conditions and opportunities of someone in, say, economics, to a senior developer or a systems engineer. Those tech professionals are in such high demand that they call the shots on where they work and how they work. If they aren't happy? They just move on to a better gig immediately.
Michelle Nelson4 said:I’m not really trying to make a case for public transit itself; it's more about the sheer distance involved. My point was simply that it's far more cost-effective to run a bus route than to fund an entire high school facility just to accommodate three classes and maybe ten students per grade level. 12 miles It's only a 20-minute ride by bus.
If you look at the geography—from the Napa Valley area out to the borders of the Barrios and Indianapolis (which most people there likely commute toward), then down to Gary (which leans more towards Memphis), and finally the Rural township that might gravitate toward a smaller town while the rest heads toward Indianapolis or Memphis because of its location—you realize how spread out things are. All together, those areas in the Rural counties don't even hit 20,000 residents, and I have no idea how many of those are actually high school-aged kids.
Now, if the distribution for the 15-19 age group matches the rest of the county (about 5.6%), we’re looking at roughly 250 students enrolling in freshman year across all those municipalities combined. Total. Which means, frankly, claiming there are 60 spots available is pure fantasy if there's no hope for things to improve down the road. Here is the breakdown: age group - percentage of population 10-14 - 5.2% 5-9 - 4.6% 0-4 - 4.2%
As I mentioned before, every new generation is smaller than the one before it, which inevitably means the teacher-to-student ratio is going to keep climbing...
Honestly, you could find studies on this topic all day long if you really wanted to. But what does any of that actually matter when you look at the local high schools? We’re talking about places that set aside three different tracks for just 20 students each, yet they can't even manage to fill those spots with more than 15 kids total. Beyond just making sure the teachers and staff have enough job security to keep things running smoothly, what actual crisis is this supposed to be solving? ☕
At the end of the day, what exactly is education to the government if not an expense? Or perhaps, should we view it as an investment? Any sensible person looks at how to squeeze the maximum value out of the minimum spend. That’s what being a "good steward" of resources means. Our leadership spends money like a billionaire on a bender—not because they actually care about people surviving and thriving in this country, but because they use public funds to give local bureaucrats a political lever. It’s a way to hand out jobs and essentially "buy" political loyalty. In short, it's just corruption fueled by taxpayer dollars.
Besides, in a place like Washington, D.C., there’s a school on every corner. I personally know plenty of families who packed up and moved away with their kids, and having plenty of schools didn't stop them for even a second.
And I notice you're persistently dodging the actual point of our discussion. The argument is that instead of throwing money at empty classrooms and teachers lecturing to vacant chairs, that capital would be much better spent improving our public transit or school bus systems. Yet, you keep circling back to talking about transit commute times. Look, we already covered the part about how the transit system needs to be reorganized. Is there anything else besides "hours spent on the bus" that you can offer as a counterargument to the idea that high schoolers should actually have full classrooms and a decent variety of programs that match their interests?
It’s pretty obvious from an aerial view that a middle school with only about 10 kids per grade isn't really contributing much to anyone's development. In my opinion, having reliable school bus service to a larger town with a wider variety of schools is definitely a better deal for students than staying at a local school with a lackluster curriculum. At the end of the day, keeping things local often just feels like an excuse to avoid organizing transportation—they act like it doesn't matter which school you attend, as long as there's one nearby, but that leaves any student who wants a different path completely on their own to figure out the logistics and costs.
Personally, I would absolutely advocate for moving more elementary grades into larger school districts. Honestly, I don't think there's anything worse than being stuck for eight years with the same four or five kids, especially if you don't particularly click with them. That kind of social isolation can be incredibly frustrating. On the other hand, in a classroom of 20 students where there are actually extracurricular activities available, your chances of finding people and interests that truly resonate with you increase exponentially.
I’m not really trying to make a case for public transit itself; it's more about the sheer distance involved. My point was simply that it's far more cost-effective to run a bus route than to fund an entire high school facility just to accommodate three classes and maybe ten students per grade level. 12 miles It's only a 20-minute ride by bus.
If you look at the geography—from the Napa Valley area out to the borders of the Barrios and Indianapolis (which most people there likely commute toward), then down to Gary (which leans more towards Memphis), and finally the Rural township that might gravitate toward a smaller town while the rest heads toward Indianapolis or Memphis because of its location—you realize how spread out things are. All together, those areas in the Rural counties don't even hit 20,000 residents, and I have no idea how many of those are actually high school-aged kids.
Kids living in big cities like Chicago often have much longer commutes to high school than this distance to Memphis. Honestly, I’d bet there are more high schoolers living in Chicago than those actually attending that specific school.
Also, just looking at the numbers for the Town of Edut (which includes Chicago) In 2011, the population was 7,300 By 2021, it dropped to 5,500
So, it’s really no mystery why they don't even have enough students to fill three classes, even if everyone stayed local—but we all know a good chunk of them are heading off to Memphis or Chicago instead.
It feels completely irrational to even advertise three separate tracks if there aren't even enough kids to fill one. Unless, of course, they think they can lure people in from out of town with some sort of "super-premium" curriculum? But looking at how they teach economics or agricultural tech, I just don't see what makes those programs particularly irresistible.