| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

AT WHAT AGE SHOULD YOU BE ALLOWED TO DROP OUT OF SCHOOL

Page history last edited by Jane's Edge 10 years ago

 

8000 HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS DROP OUT EVERY SCHOOL DAY. 

THAT'S A LINE  OF EMPTY DESKS OVER 4 MILES LONG, OR THE SAME AS 68 FOOTBALL FIELDS!

 

 

 

 

WHAT ARE THE STATISTICS FOR DROPOUTS?

 

 

 

 

RELATED ARTICLES:

 

Speak Out
What should the high school dropout age be? 

There are lots of reasons why one of your classmates might drop out of high school.

They might be bored or lazy, sure. But they might also have more serious issues such as drug or alcohol problems, or pregnancy. They might want to work full time and help out their family financially. 

But many states are trying to find ways to keep students in school. According to a report in the Boston Globe, a half-dozen states in the past ten years have passed laws raising the dropout age, including New Mexico and Connecticut. In addition, a dozen others have considered such laws. Four years ago, New Hampshire raised its legal dropout age from 16 to 18. During the 2008-09 school year, the state’s dropout rate was 1.7 percent. When the change took effect during the 2009-10 school year, the rate dropped to under a percent.

Massachusetts is hoping to replicate this success; it still lets students drop out as soon as they’re old enough to drive.

“I think we should stop letting young adults walk away at age 16,’’ State Rep. Martha Walz of Boston told the Globe. “Few, if any, 16-year-olds have the wisdom and knowledge to understand the lifelong consequences of ending their high school education at 16.’’

The dropout rate in Massachusetts has held steady at just around 3 percent since 2000, and lawmakers are eager to bring it down. But it’s not as easy as raising the age. In New Hampshire, the state legislature had to set aside money to pay for alternative programs at night, after school and online, to lend a hand to at-risk students on the verge of dropping out. This can go as far as developing individual education programs for those students.

Critics have said without these additions, raising the dropout age would fail. There’s even a movement in New Hampshire to repeal its dropout age change. Last month, the New Hampshire House passed a bill that would allow students 16 or over to withdraw from school – it is now awaiting a vote in the Senate.

What do you think?

What should the high school dropout age be? Do you think students should be able to withdraw from school at 16? Do you think a law raising the age would reduce dropout rates? What kinds of programs should be in place to make the law effective? Are those programs worth the cost? Join the discussion!

 

WHAT DO YOU THINK??????????  

Click on the lightbulb to continue...

 

Spurred by President Obama's speech,

New Jersey legislators reacted:

State legislators want to raise the age at which a student can legally leave school from 16 to 18, but the proposal still faces questions about its effectiveness and cost before going to the full Legislature.

The Senate Education Committee approved the bill Monday, following approval of a similar bill by the Assembly Education Committee on Thursday. Legislators noted poor job prospects and high incarceration rates for high school dropouts.

“Societal changes and the increasing demands of the labor market continue to place a premium on education,” Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman D-Mercer, Hunterdon, a sponsor of the bill, said in a statement.  “A person who stops attending school at age 16 will always lack the skills and preparation to successfully compete in the workforce and function in society.”

Statewide, 9,283 students formally dropped out of school in 2009-10, according to the most recent state Department of Education data provided by local school districts. That included 417 students in Atlantic County, 76 in Cape May County, 429 in Cumberland County and 468 in Ocean County. Proportionally more Black and Hispanic students dropped out than whites, making up about two-thirds of all dropouts.

A 2009 study by researchers at Northeastern University found one in 10 American male high-school dropouts ages 16 to 24 was in either prison or juvenile detention. More than half of young dropouts were unemployed.

The new bills, S647 and A1411, come on the heels of President Barack Obama calling for all states to raise their mandatory school age to 18. Currently, 21 states require schooling until age 18 or graduation.  In New Jersey, bills have been proposed since at least 2008, but never received sufficient support to move forward.  The Senate bill notes that the requirement for school attendance until age 16 was first established in 1914.

The New Jersey Education Association supports the proposal, but notes the change would put more pressure on schools to provide specialized programs potential dropouts need to be successful in school.

“Too many students drop out of school because they lack the support or do not have access to appropriate educational options,” the NJEA said in a statement supporting the bills. “We cannot allow students simply to walk away from school at age 16, and we should not allow districts to walk away from their responsibility to educate those students.”

The Senate Education Committee on Monday also approved a bill to create a Student Dropout Prevention Task Force and an Office of Dropout Prevention and Reengagement of Out-of-School Youth within the state Department of Education.

New Jersey School Boards Association spokesman Frank Belluscio said they want to review both the financial and programmatic implications of the bills before taking a position on them.

“Having appropriate programs in place is a legitimate concern,” he said.

Should the bill become law without state financial support, it could be challenged by school districts. The state Council on Local Mandates recently declared the state’s new anti-bullying law unconstitutional because the state did not provide funding to implement it under the “State Mandate State Pay” provision.

Research by the Rennie Center for Education and Research Policy in Massachusetts indicates that raising the mandatory school age alone does not appear to reduce dropout rates. A report funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation called dropouts a “silent epidemic” that must be reversed, at least in part, by making school more relevant to students and their futures.

The proposed Senate bill also includes a provision making failure to comply a disorderly persons offense. Parents or guardians of truant students could be penalized $25 for the first offense and $100 for subsequent offenses.

The New Jersey Homeschool Association opposed the bills as undermining parental authority, and the Assembly bill was amended to exclude homeschooled students. The association’s web site includes a sample letter for parents to send to Legislators that says:  “Parents, not state officials, know whether their 16-year-old young adult should pursue formal education or some other preparation for life responsibilities. The cost of forcing unwilling young adults into a formal school setting should not be added to our tax burden.”

 

 

 

 

The Senate Education Committee has approved a measure to raise the dropout age for students from 16 to 18.

The bill (S647), which was approved 3-1 with one abstention, has been floating around for years but got new life after President Obama called on every state to pass the measure in his State of the Union Address.

State Sen. Nellie Pou (D-Passaic), the bill’s sponsor, said increased costs to educate more kids will pay off in the long run with fewer prison inmates, more employed taxpayers and fewer people enrolled in welfare programs.

“It’s really about using our funds and using them wisely,” said Pou.

The measure passed the Assembly Education Committee last week. But Pou said she plans to amend it before it goes onto a vote in the full Senate, including updating truancy laws to make them less punitive.

 

THE NEW YORK TIMES REPORTS:

Obama Wades Into Issue of Raising Dropout Age

President Obama’s State of the Union call for every state to require students to stay in school until they turn 18 is Washington’s first direct involvement in an issue that many governors and state legislators have found tough to address.

While state legislative efforts to raise the dropout age to 18 have spread in recent years, many have had trouble winning passage. Last year, for example, such legislation was considered in Alaska, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland and Rhode Island — but only Rhode Island actually changed its law.

“Efforts to raise the age usually come up against the argument that requiring students to stay in school when they no longer want to be there is disruptive to other students and not fair to the teacher,” said Sunny Deye, a senior policy analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures. “Home-school groups often oppose raising the compulsory attendance age, and especially now, in this budget crunch, there are major concerns about the fiscal impact.”

In Kentucky, where the dropout age of 16 was set in 1934, legislation to move the age to 18 has failed twice. Gov. Steven L. Beshear’s State of the State message this month made another push.

The dropout age, historically set at 16 in most of the nation, has been edging up. Currently, 21 states and the District of Columbia have compulsory attendance until 18, and 11 others require attendance until age 17.

Given that Washington provides only about 10 percent of education financing, the federal government’s effort to dictate policy in an area that has always been left to the states may raise hackles.

“I will concede that having the federal government decree this, that’s going to stick hard with some people,” said Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, which supports the proposal. “But with almost a third of our students dropping out of high school, we have an economic crisis and we need to be sending a stronger message about the importance of education.”

And, he said, it would not be hard for the federal government to incentivize the higher age requirement by making it a condition of states’ getting Race to the Top grants or other federal education money.

Several economists, over two decades, have found that higher dropout ages improve not only graduation rates but entrance to higher education and career outcomes. “The evidence is quite robust that raising the school-leaving age increases educational attainment,” said Philip Oreopoulos, an economics professor at the University of Toronto, whose study found, however, that exceptions to the law, lenience in enforcement and weak consequences for truancy could all interfere with an increase. “Ideally, you use both a carrot and stick approach, so that if students have to stay in school longer you’re also providing wider curriculum options that might interest them.”

In a 2010 report on the dropout problem, Robert Balfanz, a research scientist at Johns Hopkins University, found that of the six states that increased the compulsory school age from 2002 to 2008, two — Illinois and South Dakota — experienced increases in their graduation rates, and one, Nevada, had a decline.

“It’s symbolically and strategically important to raise the age to 18, but it’s not the magical thing that in itself will keep kids in school,” Dr. Balfanz said.

Most policy experts warn that to prevent dropouts, schools need a broad range of supports for struggling students, as far back as the middle grades.

“There’s a whole array of reasons students drop out: teen pregnancy, financial obligations, detachment from the school environment, boredom, feeling the curriculum has no relevance in the real world,” said Jennifer Dounay Zinth, a senior policy analyst at the Education Commission of the States. “Schools need to intervene quickly if there are warning flags.”

 

Continue reading.... 

 

 

Even before President Obama pressed the ideain his State of the Union message, New Jersey and other states were looking to address the dropout crisis by keeping kids in school until they're 18.

Seven states have upped the age in the past decade; 11 others -- including New Jersey -- have introduced legislation in the past five years.

In all, 21 states require students to stay in school until 18 or their graduation.

But as New Jersey's bill to raise the age from 16 to 18 gets new life, including a hearing Monday in the state Senate, it is becoming apparent that just upping the age is no quick fix -- or even a slow one.

"In those states [that have raised the age], there has not been much evidence that it has had an impact," said Jennifer Zinth, a policy analyst with the Education Commission of the States, a Denver-based organization that follows state policies.

A report by a Massachusetts think-tank, completed in 2009 as that state was considering a new bill, said there may be a minimal gain in raising the age for students on the cusp.

"However, it is important to note that the most prominent advocates of the policy acknowledge that raising the compulsory school age alone will not result in fewer dropouts and more graduates," read the report by the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy. "They argue that this policy must be coupled with other actions and new alternatives to help at-risk students progress through high school."

New Jersey public schools have the highest recorded graduation rate in the country -- over 80 percent. But the dropout crisis is real in many of its cities, where in some high schools as many as half of the freshmen don't go on to graduate.

Still, the move to raise the compulsory age has never gotten much traction in the Statehouse in years past, usually derailed by concerns over short-term costs. And while those concerns remain, legislators said it was time to reconsider the long-term costs of not addressing the problem.

 

 

 

 

Why Kids Drop Out of School 

By Kate ConvissorTopics: Study Skills and Academics, Discipline, School Policy and Education Issues, Families and Relationships


Teens drop out of school for many reasons, and the decision to drop out is rarely spur of the moment. Kids usually drop out of school following a long process of disengagement and academic struggle. Many teens say they were bored and frustrated with classes that didn't seem relevant to their life. Or they felt they had fallen so far behind they eventually gave up hope. Teens report that no one really cared about their school experience, or they felt subtly "pushed out" by school staff who perceived them as difficult or dangerous.
What is absolutely predictable is that many kids who don't finish high school do poorly in life. Without a high school diploma they will have a harder time finding a job, and they will earn much less when they do find one (about a million dollars less over a lifetime). They are more likely to have poor health, to live in poverty, and to have children at an early age, who in turn are also more likely to drop out of school. Nationally, seventy percent of inmates in prison didn't graduate from high school.

While the reasons kids drop out vary, the following are six important risk factors:

  1. Academic difficulty and failure. Struggling in school and failing classes is one of the main reasons teens drop out, and this pattern often shows up early. Students who fail eighth grade English or math, for example, are seventy-five percent more likely to drop out of high school.
  2. Poor attendance. Teens who struggle in school are also absent a lot, and along with academic failure, absenteeism is an important future predictor for dropping out. As with the previous example, students who are absent for twenty percent of their eighth grade year (one day per week) are also highly likely to drop out in high school.
  3. Being held back (retention). Linked to academic difficulty, students who are held back and who are older than the kids in their grade also tend to drop out.
  4. Disengagement from school. Many kids who drop out say that school was boring and teachers did little to connect learning to real life. They didn't feel invested in their school and they didn't feel that adults seemed interested in them or their high school experience.
  5. Transition to a new school. A poor transition from the smaller, more protected environment of middle school to the anonymity of a high school can cause a teen to have difficulty catching up-and some kids never do.
  6. Other life factors. Pregnancy, family problems, and financial difficulties are all factors that distract a student from schoolwork and make keeping up more challenging.

The good news is that dropping out is easily prevented. Most teens who drop out had at least passing grades, and these kids say that, with some help, they could have completed high school. Parents who are involved in their kids' education often make the difference between academic success and failure. Kids do better when their parents care: when parents make sure their kids get to school and are progressing well and when parents communicate their expectations for success. If problems arise, involved parents have laid a solid foundation for dealing with them.
Start early to prevent high school dropouts.

 

Some more interesting facts:

  

The terrible cost of dropping out

December 12, 2011 Chicago Tribune

 

 

American educators and parents spend years drumming a message into teenagers: Don't quit school. You won't find a job. You'll wind up in jail. You'll ruin your life.

Too many kids don't listen.

A just-released report commissioned by the Chicago-based Alternative Schools Network puts some statistical muscle behind the pleas that kids stay in school. The analysis, by researchers at Northeastern University in Boston, details the staggering costs of quitting high school— for kids, for their families, their community and the nation.

A few chilling examples:

• Nearly half of 18- to 64-year-old dropouts in Chicago did not work at all last year. The unemployment rate is four times higher than it is for people with college degrees.

• Over a lifetime, dropouts lucky enough to find a job will earn only about 60 percent of what someone with a high school diploma will.

• Fifteen percent of male dropouts in Illinois who are age 18 to 34 spent time in jail last year, compared to 3 percent of high school graduates and 0.1 percent of college grads. The incarceration figure soars to 28.8 percent of African-American male dropouts, compared to 7.6 percent of black male high school graduates.

• Dropouts collect about $71,000 more in benefits such as food stamps than they pay in taxes over a lifetime. By comparison, high school graduates make a positive net contribution of $236,000. And college graduates chip in even more: $885,000.

So what can be done to keep kids from abandoning school? Plenty.

"You need two strategies working at the same time," Robin Steans of the education advocacy group Advance Illinois told us. "The first is a strong start. We know kids who are reading at grade level by 3rd grade overwhelmingly stay in school and have better life outcomes."

As one teacher told Steans: "They drop out in high school, but we lose them in 3rd grade."

The second strategy: more support in school for older kids, Steans said. That often means investing in more and better school counselors. Many charter schools excel at graduating their students because they have built stronger support systems for them.

Nothing is more important than getting excellent teachers in front of the classroom. Great teachers engage kids. But studies show the students who are most at risk of dropping out are also the least likely to have great teachers. That's why we've strongly backed school reforms that attract and reward powerhouse teachers and weed out underperformers. We need incentives for teachers who are willing to teach the toughest kids to reach.

Chicago Public Schools leaders and teachers have focused over the years on raising graduation rates. A recent report from the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research shows that that effort is paying off: 66 percent of CPS students graduate by age 19, up from 48 percent in 1997.

That's an impressive gain, but it also means that an army of kids still leave school.

That's a disastrous decision for a 16-year-old or 17-year-old to make. It puts a massive burden on them, and on their community.

 

 

 

Will Raising School Attendance Age Lower the Dropout Rate?

Feb 21, 2012 

 

The real problem isn't getting teenagers to stay in school. It's giving them a reason to show up in the first place.

school attendance-body.jpg

AP Images

Even as President Obama urges states to raise the minimum attendance age to 18, public schools nationwide are struggling to get the students who are already required to be there to show up.

In Detroit last year, the average high school student missed at least 28 days of school, according to an eye-opening story by NPR's Larry Abramson. There are plenty of reasons why families struggle to get their kids to class on time, as Abramson reports. Some of the situations reflect obvious hardship -- some families are ashamed to send their children to school in threadbare clothing. (Detroit, like many districts, does offer families with vouchers to help with such situations.) In other cases, parents don't seem to realize the seriousness of their child's truancy, or even know just how many days of school they have missed.

In Lewiston, Maine, 121 seniors failed to graduate on time last year, having missed an average of 82 days, the equivalent of half of their academic year, reported  the Bangor Daily News.  Gus LeBlanc, the principal of Lewiston High School and a former truancy officer, told the Daily News that "Parents have the greatest influence over whether kids attend or not. We really need to get parents on board to get their kids to attend school."

By the time students drop out, their poor attendance habits are well ingrained, according to recent research. In a study of Baltimore's public schools, researchers found that "increasing ninth grade attendance and course passing rates is the most important lever for increasing the graduation rate," reported Attendance Works, a nonprofit advocacy group based in San Francisco.

Not surprisingly, the better a ninth grader's attendance rate, the more likely that student was to graduate. "More than eight in 10 who attended school at least 95 percent of the time in ninth grade went on to graduate," according to the study by the Baltimore Education Research Consortium's April 2011 policy brief. "By contrast, the graduation rate was lower than 20 percent for those ninth graders who attended less than 70 percent of the time."

Some states have responded to the truancy crisis by passing legislation with stiffer consequences. In at least 27 states, skipping school will cost you your driver's license. In some school districts, parents of habitual truants can face stiff fines and jail time. The jury is still out on whether such measures will have a long-term positive effect on student learning.

In Baltimore, at least, threatening to send parents to jail when their kids skip school had some impact. Alfred Barbour, the school district's court liaison,  told the  Baltimore Sun    that "usually when the school system files charges against parents, 14 percent of cases improve, and after parents show up for their first court appearance, about 43 percent improve their attendance."

There are 18 states where students are compelled to be in school only until they turn 16, according to the Education Commission of the States. In 11 states, the compulsory school attendance age is 17. In the other 21 states and the District of Columbia, students are already required to stay in school until they turn 18.

As Education Week's Lesli Maxwell points out, experts say measures such as raising the minimum attendance age are  unlikely to have a significant impact on the dropout rate . The underlying issue -- how to make students see school as a relevant, and meaningful experience that they willingness want to engage in -- still has to be solved.

"The president is saying that we shouldn't give up on kids as soon as they turn 16, and that we should all see it as our responsibility that they graduate," Hedy Chang, the director of the San Francisco-based Attendance Works, told Education Week. "But it's not enough to just say, 'Do as I say.' Schools have to answer the question of why it matters for these students to be there."

 

 

 

NJ Makes It Harder for Potential High School Dropouts to… Well, Drop Out

By: Jeremy Taylor  |  2 weeks ago

High School Dropouts

Thinkstock

Sorry kids, but dropping out of high school in New Jersey may soon become more of a challenge.

As of now the Garden State requires that those between the ages of 6 and 16 attend school regularly, but a new bill being discussed in the state’s senate seeks to raise the mandatory age of high school attendance to 18.

The goal of the bill is improve New Jersey’s graduation rate, which is about 80 percent and already among the highest in the country. However, a 2009 report found that when states up the mandatory school age the effect on graduation rates is minimal.

Nevertheless, the bill’s advocates believe that any gain in students with diplomas is worthwhile.

“Quite simply — and quite tragically — too many of our students are being allowed to walk away before they’ve completed their education and built a foundation for their future,” said state Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman, the bill’s primary sponsor. “Futures are being lost under our current law.”

Of course one big question about the bill, if passed, is how would it be enforced. Would the state actually throw 17-year-olds, or their parents, in jail if they didn’t show up for class?

 

 

 

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.