Some Question Proposed Dropout Bill

By Amy Quinton on Friday, January 13, 2006.

listen:

This month, legislators will begin debating a bill that would raise the compulsory age of school attendance to 18.

Current state law allows students to dropout at 16, with a parentâ€™s consent.

The measure has bipartisan support. But many educators say changing the law without successful dropout prevention programs in place, may only harm students.

New Hampshire Public Radioâ€™s Amy Quinton reports.

(bell ringing)

Itâ€™s the end of the day at Londonderry High School.
18-hundred students rush for the doors.
At the same time, a few students are wandering in for their first class.
(okay students weâ€™re starting class if I could have my students attention.)

Londonderry High School offers adult education classes for students who have dropped out but still want to get their high school diploma.
54 students are in the program; 18 year old Jessica Kondry is one of them.
(I dropped out when I was 17, my mom signed me out, I didnâ€™t like where I was at, I was failing everything, sophomore year I screwed up and never went to school)

Kondry decided to work full time instead, doing odd jobs at a gas station and a pizza restaurant.
But she soon discovered she needed a high school diploma.

Kondryb (before it wasnâ€™t important at all, I didnâ€™t care but now I do cause I found out you canâ€™t get a real job without a diploma.I donâ€™t want to make seven dollars for the rest of my life, an hour )

Kondry says she wouldnâ€™t have realized the importance of a diploma had she not dropped out.
But Governor John Lynch wants to change New Hampshire law to require students like Kondry to stay in school until theyâ€™re 18.
Heâ€™s made it a centerpiece of education policy.
Kondry says itâ€™s a bad idea.

(I think if you couldnâ€™t dropout until you were 18 people wouldnâ€™t graduate, they would skip school, I think they should just stick with what it is now)

By the toughest dropout definition, 8% of Londonderry High School students end up quitting school -- compared to a statewide average of 13%.
Londonderry High School Principal Jim Elefante says he wants to see their dropout rate improve, but forcing students to stay in school isnâ€™t the answer.
(What do you do when you have a 16, 17 or 18 year old whose parents canâ€™t get them to school the court system although they try to help certainly donâ€™t have the resources the money and the time to track these kids down and force them to go to school)

Elefante says those students may also end up becoming a detriment to the school and to other classmates who want to learn.
But Republican Senator Dick Green, the prime sponsor of the legislation, says he doesnâ€™t want to see students forced into traditional classrooms.
He says the bill would actually give schools a way to provide an educational setting that works for students.
(we recognize that there are problems, this is not a panacea thatâ€™s going to solve everything, but I think we can do a better job if we actually create an environment where we say okay, we can in fact create programs for these children and I think we can lower the dropout rate by doing that.)

Green says the idea is to create individual education plans for students.
Londonderry high school assistant principal Jason Parent says the schoolâ€™s adult education program already does that.
â€œ whatâ€™s unique about the program is that students can earn credits outside the walls of a classroom they can through internships, through community services they can acquire credits that otherwise would not be available to them in the traditional setting.â€

But Parent says the program costs money.
Students have to pay 125 dollars per class to offset the cost of teacher salaries.
The school district subsidizes the remainder.
Again, Principal Jim Elefante.
â€œWeâ€™re very fortunate in Londonderry that the community is ready not only to be proactive but at the same time financially support programs for these kids, but there are a lot of communities in the state that do not, and Iâ€™m more worried about those communities and not just Londonderryâ€

The state education department doesnâ€™t keep track of how many schools have programs for those at-risk of dropping out.
But the department recently received more than two million dollars in federal dropout prevention grants â€“ which will go to high schools with the highest dropout rate.
Education Commissioner Lyonel Tracy says there will also be a summit in March to examine what dropout prevention practices work.
(weâ€™re going to say what are we doing well, what are we not doing well and what are we going to do about it, but its also going to be an opportunity for us to create a game plan for addressing this dropout problem.

Governor Lynch cited Connecticut as an example of a state that raised its compulsory attendance age and consequently lowered its dropout rate.
But Connecticutâ€™s dropout rate was steadily declining before they changed the law.
And Connecticut education officials say they canâ€™t pinpoint the policy change as a reason for the decline.
Thereâ€™s no nationwide research that shows changing the compulsory age to 18 will make a difference in the dropout rate either.
Research Vice President Cathy Kristi tracks education policies for the non partisan group Education Commission of the States.
(Itâ€™s not necessarily the upper age to which you stay in school thatâ€™s important, itâ€™s the overall length of time that students spend in school. )

Kristi says students might be better served if they are required to start school earlier.
Still, seventeen states now require attendance until 18.
Kristi says itâ€™s a growing trend, despite any truancy problems the policy may create.
(youâ€™re at least having kids in school and you have an opportunity to deal with making the schools work for them, if theyâ€™re not in school at all youâ€™ve lost that opportunity.)

Regardless of whether the legislation, if passed, reduces the dropout rate, Education Commissioner Lyonel Tracy says itâ€™s sparked a much needed debate about the stateâ€™s high schools.

(I believe this could be the most significant legislation that weâ€™ve put forth in many years more because it makes a statement that we are rallying around our high school kids, we are certainly assigning more responsibility to them, but weâ€™re also pledging more support.)

The Senateâ€™s first hearing on the legislation is scheduled for January 24th.
For NHPR news, Iâ€™m Amy Quinton.