LINCOLN — A proposal to raise the mandatory age for school attendance from 16 to 18 ran into a wall of opposition Wednesday from some state lawmakers who questioned whether that change would reduce the dropout rate and increase graduations.
Current state law requires children to remain in school until age 18, unless their parents or guardians sign a form releasing them from school after they turn 16.
State Sen. John Wightman of Lexington introduced a bill to remove that exemption.
Increasing graduation rates is one key goal of the state’s P-16 initiative. President Barack Obama, in his State of the Union address, also highlighted the need to raise the age of required school attendance to prevent dropping out and to better prepare students for jobs and college.
But several senators said forcing 17- and 18-year-olds to stay in school would divert resources away from kids who want to study and keep some disruptive students in the classroom.
Even one advocacy group, Voices for Children, lobbied against the bill, saying there’s no evidence that raising the mandatory age would decrease the state’s dropout rate. The group questioned whether there were appropriate support services or if kids would just land in juvenile court.
Supporters of the bill said it would set a new standard, put schools on notice they must work harder to keep at-risk children in the classroom, and prevent lives of crime and poor employment prospects.
“This is the kind of bill that sets the course for our state,” said Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha. “If we don’t vote for this, I think we’re drawing a line and saying we can’t do it. The Nebraska way is to not give up.”
State Education Commissioner Roger Breed said most school administrators now support requiring students to remain in school until age 18. Many schools, Breed said, have alternative high schools, career academies and other alternatives for students who want to drop out.
In the 2009-10 school year, 1,911 kids who were 16 or older dropped out of Nebraska schools.
Omaha Sen. Brenda Council said she suspects that most of them did not obtain parental permission to drop out.
She said the answer to the problem is not simply raising the mandatory age, but making it tougher to drop out and getting school officials to be more aggressive about keeping kids in school.
Council and Wightman said they planned to work on an amendment patterned after an Indiana law that would require consent of a principal and a conversation about the consequences of dropping out before a parent could remove a child from school after age 16. Sickness, a court order or financial need would be the only legal reasons for dropping out, Council said.
The offer of the amendment helped push the bill to first-round advancement on a 29-17 vote.
Ashford did offer an interesting idea during the debate: to renovate Omaha’s aging Civic Auditorium into a career academy for 1,000 students to learn welding and engineering skills.
The senator said he had asked an Omaha architectural firm to look at the feasibility of converting the arena into a tech school.
Ashford has introduced a bill to promote creation of career academies across the state, but funding the idea has not won support.
Contact the writer:
402-473-9584, paul.hammel@owh.com
After a promise to toughen up an exception that allows kids to drop out at 16, the proposal was advanced from first-round debate with four votes to spare, 29-17.
Preventing dropouts is one goal of the state's P-16 initiative and President Barack Obama's education plan to boost student achievement and better prepare youths for jobs or college.
But several senators said that you can't force 17- and 18-year-olds to stay in school if they don't want to be there and that doing so will divert resources away from the kids who want to study and keep more disruptive students in the classroom.
The Ralston-based child advocacy group Voices for Children distributed a fact sheet saying no evidence shows that raising the mandatory age will decrease the state's dropout rate and that preventing teenagers from legally dropping out without appropriate alternatives for education may not contribute to more successful students.
Right now, state law requires children to remain in school until age 18, but they can drop out legally after turning 16 if parents or guardians sign a notarized release form.
In the 2009-10 school year, 1,911 kids who were 16 or older dropped out of Nebraska schools.
State officials said they don't keep statistics on how many dropped out with parental permission, but several senators said they doubted it was very many. They said simply eliminating a little-used legal option to drop out would not keep more kids in school or lead to higher graduation rates.
"This gives the impression that we're solving the problem," said Lincoln Sen. Tony Fulton. "Nothing's going to change."
Supporters of the bill said raising the age would set an important benchmark for educators that will force them to work harder and earlier to keep at-risk kids in school and to develop alternatives, such as schools that prepare youths for good-paying, technical jobs.
"This is the kind of bill that sets the course for our state," said Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha. "If we don't vote for this, I think we're drawing a line and saying we can't do it. The Nebraska way is to not give up."
Sen. John Wightman of Lexington introduced the compulsory education measure, Legislative Bill 996, to address the high dropout rate in his district. Obama, in his State of the Union address, also highlighted the need to raise the age.
Wightman said allowing kids to drop out at age 16 not only hurts their future earning power, but also increases costs for society, in terms of higher rates of crime and poverty and greater need for Medicaid and other social services.
"The era in which a high school dropout can earn a living wage has diminished," Wightman said. "It's clearly in the best interest of that child to stay in school and earn that diploma. The current law does the opposite."
In 2004, the state raised the compulsory age of attendance to 18, with an the exception if parents signed a release. But the reality is many of the kids who drop out don't get the release, and are not pursued by law enforcement for being truants.
State Education Commissioner Roger Breed said that most school administrators now support requiring all kids to remain in school until age 18 and that many schools now have alternative high schools, career academies and other alternatives for students who want to drop out.
Omaha Sen. Brenda Council said raising the age would make schools more aggressive in keeping kids in the classroom.
Sensing the opposition to the bill, she promised to offer an amendment during second-round debate to continue to allow parents to sign releases that allow children to drop out at 16.
Council said her amendment would require school officials to be involved in that decision in hopes they can convince children it's in their best interest to remain in school.
Contact the writer:
402-473-9584, paul.hammel@owh.com
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