A Very Bright Idea. (May 19, 2010)

A couple of days ago New York Times Columnist Bob Herbert visited Bard College "to talk about Bard High School Early College, a school on the Lower East Side of Manhattan that gives highly motivated students the opportunity to earn both a high school diploma and a two-year associate of arts degree in the four years that are usually devoted to just high school. That will allow them upon entering university to undertake second or third year university with every expectation of doing well.

The kids come to the school (mostly by subway) from everyone of New York City's five boroughs and "from just about every background imaginable". Their enthusiasm as Mr Herbert describes it is heart warming, but it must also be noted that all have been subjected to an entrance examination

The school was founded in 2001 and is the product of a collaboration between Bard College and New York City's Department of Education, and the College's president, Leon Botstein, would like to see 150 such schools created across the United States, which would be able to reach roughly 100,000 students.

Click here for 2 minute video

The case that Bob Herbert is putting is: "The idea should [be] to develop a flexible system of public education that would allow all — or nearly all — children to thrive. One of the things Bard has shown is that kids from wildly different backgrounds — including large numbers of immigrant children — can thrive in an educational environment that is much more intellectually demanding than your typical high school... As I watched a small group of history students enthusiastically participating in a discussion of events in the post-World War II period, I thought of a comment that a student in the biology lab, Claire Fishman, had made to me earlier: 'When I get to [university], I’m going to be really well prepared.'"