BILLS TO raise the compulsory school age have been kicking around the State House as aimlessly as high school dropouts on graduation day. And like those dropouts, the bills will need to be nurtured carefully if they are ever to amount to anything.
Last week, the Legislature’s Education Committee held a hearing on a bare-bones-bill that would raise the dropout age from 16 to 18. Upping the age when students can leave school makes good sense - but only if lawmakers and educators focus as much on what students need to achieve success as the date on their birth certificates.
Dropping out of high school wasn’t always an irrational act. As late as the 1960s and ’70s, dropouts in Massachusetts could find decent-paying jobs in manufacturing plants. But a high school diploma is now the rock-bottom minimum requirement to establish an independent life.
Educators in Boston, Fall River, and other areas where dropout rates push or exceed double digits already know what works and what doesn’t when it comes to redeeming failing or unmotivated students. These systems create special “recovery’’ classrooms or academies for students who are often two or more years behind their peers academically, and therefore at the greatest risk of dropping out. Schools can no longer pretend that they can place a 17-year-old struggling student in a class with 14-year-olds and expect anything but disruption.
A recent report from a legislative commission offers guidance to schools with less success at addressing the dropout issue. It emphasizes ways to connect the curriculum to the workplace and offers advice on how to use standardized testing data to predict which students are most likely to drop out. Personalized approaches work best, because students’ reasons for leaving school vary widely - from pregnancy to difficulties learning English. Also hopeful is the recent legislative focus on raising the cap on charter schools in lagging school districts where the dropout rates are triple or quadruple the statewide average of 3.4 percent.
School systems needn’t focus solely on four-year graduation rates. There should be no shame for students who get through in five or six years. Raising the compulsory school age to 18 reflects that reality and gives students and teachers more time to invest and succeed.
