This year of licensed irresponsibility, this two-semester recurring national holiday, was threatened recently in Utah by a Republican legislator’s proposal to do away with 12th grade entirely. The idea was advanced as a budget-cutting measure — a way to shave millions from the cash-strapped state’s expense sheet — and it called forth the sort of instant, intense hostility that often signals that an inspired notion, truly innovative, truly new, has, by some miracle, entered politics.

Love this NY Times piece on the "importance" of senior year.