Should Students Be Allowed to Skip Senior Year of High School? Is senior year just about partying? If so, should prepared students be allowed to skip it and spend a year volunteering, or go on to college early? Or, does senior year play an key role in helping students transition emotionally to being on their own? Would you want to skip senior year? The Sunday Review regularly posts invitations to a "dialogue" with readers about topics in the news. Last Sunday, Marc F. Bernstein began the conversation on "A Cure for "Senioritis"?" by writing: Most students in the United States spend four years in high school, grades 9 through 12, whether they benefit from the fourth year or not. Individualizing the high school experience by permitting students, parents and educators to jointly decide, student by student, if three years, three and a half years or a full four years are required to meet that student's educational needs is an imperative, especially given how unproductive the senior year - the infamous senioritis - can be for so many students. During my many years as a superintendent of schools and more recently as an education consultant, I have noted the large number of highly underscheduled high school seniors. Having met their high school graduation requirements, they have chosen, with their parents" and counselors" permission, to have late school arrivals, multiple lunch periods and only two or three classes. I propose that by the time a teenager is in 10th grade, the student, family and counselor plan either a traditional or alternative grade 12. Far superior alternatives to the traditional 12th-grade year exist for many students: beginning full-time college earlier, taking selected college courses on the college or high school campus, working to pay for college, and participating in a volunteer, apprenticeship or service experience. Students: Read what others have posted in response to Mr. Bernstein, then tell us ... Is this writer correct? Are many seniors so "underscheduled" that the year is a waste? Should students, in collaboration with their parents and schools, have the opportunity to go to college early, or take other alternative learning routes, like internships, that year? Do you think students need the fourth year of high school to be emotionally ready for college? What about the rituals of senior year, like prom and senior trips? What would be lost if they were skipped? Do you think a policy like this would further divide students by ability, class and race since only highly prepared students would be able to do this? If so, what would you do instead?