Welcome
President Obama's State of the Union Address will bring new life to an idea that has many more skeptics than believers in North Carolina -- raising the compulsory attendance age. In this week's CommenTerry, I provide some perspective on this complex issue. 

Bulletin Board

• The North Carolina History Project would like educators and homeschool parents to submit lesson plans suitable for middle-school and high-school courses in North Carolina history. Please provide links to NC History Project encyclopedia articles and other primary and secondary source material, if possible. Go to the NC History Project web site for further information.
  
  
• Savor the flavor. Visit JLF's research newsletter archive. 

CommenTerry

In his 2012 State of the Union Address, President Obama outlined only one specific K-12 education reform -- ensure that all states had a compulsory school attendance age of 18. He declared,

We also know that when students aren't allowed to walk away from their education, more of them walk the stage to get their diploma. So tonight, I call on every State to require that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn eighteen. 

This would be a monumental change. Currently, well over half of U.S. states have a mandatory attendance age of 16 or 17 (see Facts and Stats below).

North Carolina education officials and policymakers have debated this issue for several years. In 2007, the John Locke Foundation published the first major examination of the issue in North Carolina. In a Spotlight report titled, "Raise the Bar, Not the Age: Why raising the compulsory school age won't reduce dropouts," yours truly found that national and international data and research failed to show a significant relationship between mandatory attendance age and graduation rate. 

The State Board of Education has been a consistent and vocal advocate of increasing the state's compulsory school attendance age from 16 to 17 (or 18). They reason that the change would force struggling kids to stay in school longer and, if all goes to plan, earn a high school diploma. However, board members, particularly banking executive John Tate, often overlooked the considerable costs associated with making the change. Estimates of the cost of increasing the school attendance age vary considerably, but most agree that the change would require the legislature to allocate several million dollars per year to cover additional law enforcement, court, and educational costs. The cost issue has been the main concern voiced by members of the NC General Assembly who, despite this policy disagreement, endeavored to find ways to solve the state's high school dropout problem.

That is not to say that all members of the General Assembly reject the idea. In 2007, for example, Rep. Angela Bryant, a Democrat who represents the counties of Halifax and Nash, led a major effort to persuade the legislature to move forward with increasing the dropout age. Although she admitted that "we really don't know if it will increase the graduation rate," she contended that the change would make "a cultural and institutional statement" about the value of school. 

Rather than dismiss the concerns of the State Board of Education and legislators like Rep. Bryant, General Assembly leaders later asked the board to appoint a Blue Ribbon Task Force to examine the issue further (see Senate Bill 900, Session Law 2010-152, Section XIV). After a thorough review of available research, the task force submitted a written report to the General Assembly in November 2010.

Members of a Blue Ribbon Task Force were not persuaded that the fiscal, programmatic, and training costs of increasing the compulsory attendance age from 16 to 17 (or 18) would outweigh presumed benefits. The task force argued that, at best, the research was "inconclusive in determining whether raising the compulsory attendance age increases or decreases the state's four year cohort graduation rate" (p. 7). Rather than propose an increase in the age regardless of inconclusive research, the task force recommended further study of the issue. At the same time, the left-leaning NC Partnership for Educational Opportunity issued a policy report that strongly agreed with the conclusions of the task force report. It took three years for the rest of education community to catch up to JLF's "Raise the Bar, Not the Age" report -- better late than never, I suppose. 

For now, President Obama has not outlined how the federal government would compel over half of U.S. states to increase their mandatory school attendance age laws. I worry that the Obama administration will require states like North Carolina to raise their compulsory attendance age as a condition to receiving future Race to the Top grants. The promise of more federal money may be enough to convince unenlightened state legislatures to make the ill-advised change. Fortunately, the NC General Assembly is too smart to fall for those tricks. Right, guys? Anyone?

Random Thought

In the words of Kool-Aid Man, "Oh, yeah!" 

Facts and Stats

As of August 2010, the maximum compulsory age of attendance was 18 years in 20 states and the District of Columbia (D.C.), 17 years in 11 states, and 16 years in 19 states [including North Carolina].
-- National Center for Education Statistics,Condition of Education 2011, May 2011

Mailbag

I would like to invite all readers to submit announcements, as well as their personal insights, anecdotes, concerns, and observations about the state of education in North Carolina. I will publish selected submissions in future editions of the newsletter. Anonymity will be honored. For additional information or to send a submission, email Terry at tstoops@johnlocke.org.

Education Acronym of the Week

RttT or R3T -- Race to the Top

Quote of the Week

"I'm a Democrat. But I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more. That's why my education reform offers more competition, and more control for schools and States. That's why we're getting rid of regulations that don't work. That's why our health care law relies on a reformed private market, not a Government program."
-- President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, January 24, 2012

Click here for the Education Update archive.