Drop Out Rates Drop
Friday, January 29, 2010 at 08:55AM John Lynch after being slapped down hard this week by the supreme court for attempting to illegally take money that didn't belong to him in order to cover his party's out of control spending needed something to toot his horn about. He needed good news.
Out comes the news about High School drop out rates. According to figures just released this tuesday, the state's drop out rates have declined.
Hip hip hooray, that's good news right?
Not as great as you would think. Let's not forget that in 2007 Lynch signed law raising the drop out rates to 18. Kind of hard for a kid to drop out when it's now against the law to do so.
Considering it's now against the law to drop out, where before it wasn't is it really that impressive that we now have a 6.7% drop out rate compared to 9.7% before the law took effect?
The thing to watch isn't going to be a one year look at drop out rates. No, the real telling statistic will be graduation rates. Is it really helping anyone to force a 17 year old to stay in school one more year if he simply turns around and drops out at 18 instead of 17 and learns nothing in that year he's forced to stay in school? All we're accomplishing is wasting thousands of tax dollars on a child who do not wish to be there and refuses to try.
Since the law was just signed in 2007 and didn't take effect until July 2009 the data is not there yet to really see if there are impacts on graduation rates. That will be the real measure of it's success.
Drop out Rates, Education, Lynch, school in Education
Reader Comments (4)
here's what you got wrong in this blog post:
- the law you referred to didn't take effect until July 2009. That is the beginning of the 2009/2010 school year, not the 2008-09 school year as you seem to think.
- the data that the Governor referenced was for the 2008/2009 school year. This is before the law took effect. The decline in the drop-out rates has nothing to do with the law you referenced.
- the law doesn't say kids have to stay in school until they are 18. It says if they are leaving before that they must have a plan for completing their education: "The plan could include work study, night school, preparing for a high school equivalency test or participating in alternative programs. Superintendents still can allow students to drop out."
If I knew as little about this issue as you do, I would be sorely tempted to keep quiet about the subject. Hope this advice helps.
However two points for you, this doesn't change the point that graduation rates are the key factor here that will tell if the law is working or not.
Further more by taking effect in July 2009, anyone who did attempt to drop out in the 08-09 school year is now forced back in so my original wording was true. Not to mention as the Telegraph pointed out Lynch also changed the way we count drop outs after 2007 which I would guess also helped him pad some numbers. Really easy to show improvements when you change your method of counting.
As for your comment about changing the rules on how to count drop outs, this was done prior to the 2007/2008 school year, so you are looking at an apples-to-apples comparison. Re-read the article in the Telegraph. Your belief that Lynch changed the way he counts the drop outs to pad the numbers, this is a cartoonish way of understanding how the world works. The reality is there have traditionally been several methods of counting drop outs and the federal government is creating a standard way that all states have to have in place by 2010. NH complied early. No conspiracy.
But to the bigget point- do you really have a problem that more kids are staying in school? This strikes me as something we should all be pleased with. NH used to do very poorly in this area- the drop out rate was close to 20% in 2001 and today it is under 7%. That's great news.
If they are not graduating and keeping them there is only distracting from kids who actually are trying to learn, yes I do have a problem with them being there. And if we're wasting tens of thousands of additional tax payers dollars to keep them in a school but not actually teaching them and getting any return on their being there other then them causing problems because they'd sooner drop out, again... yes I have a problem with that.