Raising the Compulsory School Age Won't Raise Achievement Levels

As the General Assembly moves into its final days of the 2012 legislative session, elected officials are scrambling to pass a bill that will raise the compulsory school age to 18. On March 20, the Senate passed SB 362 by a margin of 30-16. Last Friday, the House committee voted to amend some language within their version of the bill, and are moving forward with its passage.

Encouraged by President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address, which called on states to raise the age at which students can drop out of school, Maryland legislators crafted a well-intentioned but misguided bill.

We can look at studies that show us how increasing the compulsory school age leads to higher graduation rates, but I challenge you to consider: At what cost?

At a budgetary level, the state anticipates that it will cost more than $126 million over three years to phase in the new compulsory school age law. That money would cover costs associated with transporting students to school, providing them with free and reduced meals for breakfast and lunch, hiring additional teachers, and providing additional instructional material, such as textbooks and special education services.

Some locales, such as Baltimore City, Prince George’s and Baltimore counties, areas facing dropout rates of up to 2,600 students a year, would face the need for new school construction or portable classrooms, too.

These expenses only begin to address the needs that come with warehousing teenagers who do not want to go to school.

Just because the law mandates a student must attend school, doesn’t mean they do.

Prince George’s County already deals with one-in-four high school students who skip twenty or more days a year from school. Raising the compulsory school age to 18 means schools will face the added expense of tracking down students and dragging them to school.

In 2007, a state-appointed task force released a report, Attending to Learn, which examined whether or not Maryland should increase the age that kids are required to stay in school. One hundred twenty-four pages of analysis later, the task force concluded, "a change in the compulsory attendance age will not reduce the dropout rate".

We already know that keeping kids in schools does not guarantee they will learn. In fact, the distractions and disruptions caused by angry youth who wish to be elsewhere creates safety issues for teachers and students who want to learn.

Valuable instructional time will be diverted to increased classroom management issues. Maryland may be able to eventually boast higher graduation rates, but what about achievement levels?

I am not suggesting that Maryland turns its back on at-risk youth. On the contrary, if the General Assembly believes we have an extra one-hundred million plus dollars to spend on education, then I urge them to consider other options for meeting the needs of these vulnerable teens.

In fact, let’s not wait until they are teenagers before we offer interventions to keep them interested and motivated in their own education. Let’s examine the research on dropout prevention and implement real and effective solutions, rather than just manipulate our statistics by requiring kids to stay in school longer.

Fifty education experts met as part of the 2007 task force, for one year, to discuss compulsory school age needs in Maryland. They prepared a thoughtful report with excellent alternative educational recommendations for at-risk students. It’s time we dust off that report and challenge ourselves to think outside the box.