The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette (and several other outlets) has a story on Indiana leading the nation in dropouts. Obviously this isn’t a statistic in which you want to lead the country, but how do you combat this sort of thing?
Indiana lawmakers recently passed legislation making it more difficult for students to drop out of school. Previously, students under the age of 18 could drop out of school with their parents’ permission.
Now, students under the age of 18 can only drop out for reasons of financial hardship, illness or with the consent of a judge.
I guess I don’t know if this is a good approach or a bad approach. The lawmaker’s hearts are obviously in the right place, but it seems to me that if you have a 16 year old who wants to drop out with a parent willing to let that happen, forcing them to stay in school is going to do more to diminish the quality of education of the rest of the students than it is going to help the would-be dropout.
Obviously, we need a new program, fully funded at the federal level, to combat this crisis.
Then again, how much does Indiana spend per student? How does that rank nationally compared to our dropout rate? What is the classroom funding per student versus building/admin funding?
Then you have NCLB. Is that why we are finally getting true and accurate figures? I don’t know the answer, but it seems like more and more school systems and states are coming clean. After so many years. Nothing like the schools that teach our kids finally admitting they have been lying year after year.
Time Magazine had a cover story about Shelbyville Indiana and its dropout problem a couple of months back…