Ask HN: Friend's 15 year old wants to drop out, I've been asked to intervene

have you seen minute physics on YouTube?

I would strongly dissuade you from ending your formal education at this time. That said, your career accomplishments qualify you as 'child prodigy' in the eyes of college admissions counsellors, on the one hand, and successfully graduating with C's / D's will if anything hurt your case.

Get your GED. Find a good, large community college at 16, and begin there on a part-time schedule, perhaps 12 credits a year instead of the normal 24-36. Get straight A's or don't bother. Now, at any time in your progress towards a "2-year degree" (including after graduation), you can transfer out to a big-name university and have most of your classes count. You have an academic track record that shows you can successfully study, and an extracurricular that outweighs anyone else's. It enables you to focus your learning, remove yourself from the often harsh social environment of high school, and put off the decision about whether you'll begin a traditional college experience for years, and still be ahead of the game age-wise and credibility-wise.

There is a reasonable chance that your business will fail entirely, or be sold profitably in the next five years, and this route provides you with long-lived options, without wasting the time you're wasting now.

This is not a well-grounded suggestion, but FWIW. Child stars (e.g. film) -- or their parents, although the child's income may well be paying for this -- hire tutors. They cram in concentrated, often one-on-one tutor time and independent study on top of often full schedules. In part, the concentration and quality may reduce the total number of hours required.

I don't know this person's income, but would something like this be an option? Combined with "graduating" early?

In this case, he might be taking the initiative himself, rather than through a parent. But the mechanics seem workable, even if this is not within some established paradigm and set of expectations.

In the business world, rather than e.g. the film world, this person might be considered a "star child". Why not afford him the same opportunity that a film star would have?

I don't know the socio-economic position of this "[private school]", but this sounds as if it's in the U.S., and "private school" and some other content lead me to assume a few things: Both parents are in careers and/or otherwise too engaged to consider home schooling. There may be enough money in the family to help with private tutoring in addition to or aside from the kid's own income. (Much private schooling in the U.S. is not cheap.)

From the language used in our protagonist's letter to his principal, it appears to me that he could benefit from some additional education. At least in written English, there is room for improvement.

So... get the degree, and some additional education. But do it your way, with a concentrated curriculum and instruction that provides the most useful concentration possible while eliminating as much of the bullshit and crap as possible.

Just a suggestion for consideration.

Learning to be a system administrator is a skill. I don't doubt for a moment he is skilled.

It reads as if you have equated skill acquisition with knowledge acquisition, can you say more about what leads you to believe those are equivalent?

When I was homeschooling in California, you could opt out of public school by hiring a tutor for three hours a day (as just one option). According to info I downloaded here: http://homeschoollegaladvantage.com/resources/homeschool-law... you can opt out of school in Colorado by hiring a tutor for four hours a day, 172 days a year. Compulsory attendance extends to age 17. So his parents may be in no position to let him simply drop out. They could be dragged into court for violation of truancy laws.

I tried to suggest this was the stuff to look into. No one upvoted it or replied to it. It appears to have been completely ignored. But as a former homeschooling parent and former bright teen who tried to convince parents and school administrators to let me do early college, etc, I have firsthand relevant experience. Hopefully, your comment gets a little more notice than mine did. A fifteen year old simply has no legal right to tell parents and school "screw you", especially not to run his business. If it were a case of abuse and he was willing to flee to another state, he might have a bit more flexibility, though at a cost (a lot of runaways wind up prostitutes and/or drug addicts -- not normally a better alternative than putting up with parents and compulsory attendance laws). Those extremes really do not seem to have any bearing on this specific situation.