Time in school > time spent learning

Before I became a schoolteacher, I used to have an honest job in a real office. Most bosses in these situations operate under a number of ridiculous counter-intuitive assumptions such as (a) if you had your butt in your chair in the office you were, ipso facto, working; (b) if you were anywhere outside of the office you could not possibly be working; and (c) the only conceivable times when work might get done were the very same hours that the boss was in the office, not before and not after. The idea that one might work in different times, places and in different ways did not occur to most supervisors in those days, probably because they hated their own jobs and could not imagine doing them without physical compulsion and social pressure. Nonetheless, the fallacy continues--being present means you're doing work. This delusion is particularly rabid in the public schools.

A few days ago the New York Times reported that

[d]ozens of public high schools in eight states will introduce a program next year allowing 10th graders who pass a battery of tests to get a diploma two years early and immediately enroll in community college. Students who pass but aspire to attend a selective college may continue with college preparatory courses in their junior and senior years...The tests would cover not only English and math but also subjects like science and history.

“One hope is that this board exam system can prepare students to move on to careers, to higher ed and technical colleges and the workplace, sooner rather than later,” said Howard T. Everson, a professor of educational psychology at CUNY, who is co-chairman of the advisory committee. In that respect, the effort is similar to the growing early college high school movement, in which students begin taking college-level courses while they are still in high school and earning college credit through nearby community colleges.

...Its backers say the new system would reduce the need for community colleges to offer remedial courses because the passing score for the 10th-grade tests would be set at the level necessary to succeed in first-year college courses...

...Kentucky’s commissioner of education, Terry Holliday, said ...“We’ve been tied to seat time for 100 years. This would allow an approach based on subject mastery — a system based around move-on-when-ready.”

...Supporters include...National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union.

I'm not sure what this all means. On the one hand, some students will avoid wasting time in high school sitting through instruction on things they have already mastered or subjects for which there are good substitute courses in a community college setting. On the other hand, are we headed for a two-tier class-reinforcing education system, such as has been traditional in Europe, wherein certain students are predestined for laboring trades and others for university work at an age too early to truly assess an individual's intellectual capacity, clouded as it is with issues of maturation and social adaptation?