Why Jarvis' Dropout Plan Won't Work -- and What Will

The Idaho Statesman is reporting that Rich Jarvis is proposing to spend $11 million by forcing students to stay in high school until they're 18 (unless they graduate, presumably). The new law would help promote higher graduation rates, lower crime rates, and boost the economy because high school graduates earn more money, pay more taxes, and are less likely to spend time in jail, he said in an earlier version of the Statesman story.

The move is not a surprise; in fact, Jarvis had said during the campaign that he wanted to make high school graduation mandatory. Apparently he realized that while he can force the horse to come to water, he can't make it drink, and instead is sticking to just making the students stay enrolled until they're 18 rather than trying to force them to pass.

Of course,  having more kids graduate from high school is a laudable goal. But this is a feel-good proposal that substitutes a law for actually solving a problem -- if indeed it's a problem at all -- that goes against current thinking, and which may actually make Idaho schools worse.

Let's start with the fact that it takes away parental choice. Some legislators have voted against kindergarten and pre-kindergarten education, saying giving parents that option takes away their parental choice.  If legislators really support parental choice, they would continue to allow parents and students to make the choice to leave school at 16, if they decided it was best for the student.

Indeed, should the law pass, parents could be charged with a misdemeanor if their teenagers are declared to be "habitually truant" and don't attend school. 

A copy of Jarvis' proposed legislation is not yet available, so it isn't clear what the $11 million it will cost includes other than the per-student amount the department pays schools. Does it include enforcement? How, exactly, will this be enforced? How many staff people will it take to make sure the kids come to school, and to charge the parents with crimes if they don't?

(Jarvis, in fact, doesn't understand why the new legislation would cost anything. “We’re putting another student in the classroom. We already have a teacher. We already have desks. We have the textbooks, heat, lights. Where is the expense?” he's quoted as saying in the Statesman.)

 It also isn't clear how a group of disgruntled students will end up graduating, unless the schools begin passing students regardless of their performance, which will end up cheapening the value of a high school diploma for all Idaho students.  Or will the students get a wink and a nod that they are being "homeschooled," giving the impression that homeschooling is a way to get out of the requirements and making it harder for those families who actually do homeschool to be treated legitimately?

Moreover, having a group of potentially disruptive 16- and 17-year-olds in a high school could be distracting, and perhaps even dangerous, for other students, making it more difficult for the students to get an education who want to be there. What would having a group of poorly performing, unmotivated students do to Idaho's compliance rate with federal standards such as No Child Left Behind?

In this budget year, when schools are already facing having their budgets cut by more than 5 percent, do we want to spend $11 million to force students to attend school who don't want to be there? What more will be cut from the education budget to provide this $11 million?

Did Jarvis even talk to the Department of Education about his proposal? According to the December 2008 newsletter from the Idaho Business Coalition for Education Excellence, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna told the group in September that one of his top three priorities was "a K-10 system in which students pass a comprehensive exam and, if proficient, go on to community college or a professional technical school. A student could stay in high school for grades 11 and 12 to take remedial courses or advanced placement/college prep courses." How does this fit with Jarvis' proposal to force students to stay in school until they're 18?

The problem is that Jarvis thinks that slapping a rule, forcing students to stay in school until 18, guarantees that they will learn, and will get a high school diploma. It doesn't work that way. 

If Jarvis' real goal is to increase the number of high school graduates in Idaho, as he claims, there's better ways to do it. Instead of making a new law and adding to the amount of government, how about finding out what actually makes students drop out, and solve those problems?

First, Idaho's rate of high school graduates is pretty good. As of 2006, the most recent year for which numbers are available, Idaho ranks 13th in terms of students graduating high school. 78.7 percent of students graduate from high school. And the preliminary figures for 2007-2008, as given by the Statesman, are even lower than those for 2006-2007.

Jarvis said that 18 states have already required students to stay in school until 18, but if you look at the statistics, states that have implemented those laws don't necessarily have better rates of graduating from high school. New Jersey, for example, has the highest rate of graduation, with 86.3 percent, but it lets students drop out at 16. 

In fact, of the 12 states with higher graduation rates than Idaho, only Wisconsin and Utah require students to stay in school until 18, while Nebraska, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania require students to stay in school until 17. But New Jersey, Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, Vermont, Montana, and North Dakota all have better graduation rates than Idaho, and all allow students to drop out at 16. 

If the goal is really to increase the number of high school graduates, then the solution is to keep students motivated to stay in school. If they can't -- perhaps for financial reasons, perhaps because they don't do well in a class situation -- then how about increasing the number of alternative high schools, perhaps at night or online?

Studies such as Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone have also shown that states with a great deal of "social capital" -- that is, trust, networks, and reciprocity within a child's family, peer group, school, and community -- have schools with higher rates of graduation. If Idaho wants to improve its rate of graduation, it could encourage citizens to take part in actions that improve social capital, such as increasing the turnout in presidential elections, attending more community and neighborhood clubs, increasing the number of nonprofit organizations, or going to church more often. 

There's a community forum in Nampa on January 30th called Keeping the Promise that talks about just that. "If we are to be successful on behalf of at-risk children, we must find a way to provide them with lifelong connections with caring and supportive adults, who can help them transition to the workforce, achieve their higher education goals, and deal with the issues of life when they happen," according to the description of the keynote. While there is one workshop on whether the age should be raised, all the others are about actually looking at the problem.

But this all requires work, and thought -- much more thought than simply slapping people with a new rule and more government -- which isn't even as likely to work.