Dropout Bill gets hearing in city
By Steve Urbon
The Standard Times
December 6, 2009
NEW BEDFORD — In the epic campaign to curb high school dropouts, Massachusetts may be about to employ a tactic other states are using to keep 16-year-olds from bolting from the classroom: tell them that they can't do it.
A bill to raise the mandatory schooling age in Massachusetts, filed by Rep. Antonio F. D. Cabral, D-New Bedford, is perhaps the most controversial of a group of education bills before the Legislature's Joint Committee on Education.
That committee is set to conduct a public hearing on those bills at the city's main library on Friday. Cabral sponsored three of them, including proposals to cut down on bullying and to implement a mandatory full-day kindergarten.
But it is the idea of raising the minimum dropout age to 18 that has caught on nationwide, and may pass next year as the state officially aims at halving its dropout rate by 2014. Nineteen other states already have a mandatory minimum of 18, and 11 others including Massachusetts have considered it in recent years.
Locally, the idea has strong support. Mayor Scott W. Lang, who chairs the School Committee, is solidly behind it. Cabral's bill is co-sponsored by state Reps. Stephen R. Canessa and Robert Koczera, both New Bedford Democrats. State Sen. Mark Montigny also added his name to the bill.
But the real push is coming from the just-completed report of the governor's Graduation and Dropout Prevention and Recovery Commission.
The commission reasoned that, apart from a series of other recommendations, raising the minimum dropout age should happen as an expression of the state's commitment to the cause.
In fact, the argument in favor of raising the age is more an expression of hope and determination and common sense than it is based on empirical evidence that it will actually work.
A report was issued earlier this year by the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy, a spin-off of the MassINC think tank. After surveying all of the other states, the center report "concludes that there is no credible empirical evidence to support this policy alone as an effective strategy to combat the dropout crisis."
Of the 10 states with the highest graduation rates, just three required attendance past age 16, said the report. A handful of states with the age 18 requirement have among the lowest dropout rates, but the lowest of all, North Dakota, sets theirs at age 16.
Massachusetts' dropout rate is well below the national average, but New Bedford's ranks among those of other urban centers that are plagued by dropouts, with only about 56 percent of freshmen making it through to graduation in four years.
The Rennie report said, "The Center argues that prior to considering a raise in the compulsory age of attendance, the commonwealth should focus its energy and resources on developing policies and programs that research has shown to be successful in helping at-risk students stay in school and persist to earning a diploma."
The crucial word in that statement might be "alone." Measuring the effect of raising the age is effectively impossible, the Rennie report found, because it doesn't happen in a vacuum. Dropout prevention efforts have many moving parts, and separating their effects isn't easy. In Massachusetts, the commission proposed a laundry list of things that the state ought to do, the kinds of things that Rennie endorses: address student alienation from school, increase options, improve early intervention, and so on.
Also, imposing an increase in the dropout age, if done seriously and not as a half-hearted gesture, is going to require a significant investment in truancy enforcement, classrooms, teacher development and alternative programs, all of which must be paid for.
Mayor Lang dismissed concerns about space and resources. "We've got the classrooms, we've got the desks, we've got the teachers," he said.
But the Rennie Center's director of research, Lisa Formularo, said that Boston's schools were surveyed in 2006 and were found to have the capacity to enroll only 18 percent of those students who would be required to attend school.
Yet she said she understands why raising the age has such support. "The policy has such intuitive appeal," she said. "People feel it sends a message."
But what message? Schools Superintendent Dr. Portia Bonner, who came to this city from Connecticut, which has a dropout age of 18, echoed a point made by many others: "There's a concern that children may not physically drop out but they mentally drop out. For us the concern is having interventions and prevention to keep out students engaged."
The city employs a dropout prevention specialist, Bernadette Coelho, who Dr. Bonner credited with recovering the school careers of 54 students.
Lang said he believes that raising the age will cause students to rethink their approach to school. Adding two years to the minimum age will bring most students from sophomore year to senior, and thus much closer to graduation. In that case, completing school will be seen as a much more attainable goal. "Graduation Day is clearly in sight," he said.
Lang also continues to blame the MCAS testing requirement for causing more students to quit.
And he targets the denial of diplomas to roughly 5 percent of Massachusetts seniors as creating a class of young people who stayed in school and satisfied all the other requirements for graduation, but who nonetheless are treated like dropouts in society with a "worthless" certificate of attendance.
Cabral sees another issue: grade retention, otherwise known as "staying back." Students with unaddressed learning issues aren't helped by repeating grades, becoming bored and frustrated, and growing older than the other students at their grade level. He sees this as a formula for dropping out.
Cabral, Lang and other officials and lawmakers are expected to attend Friday's committee hearing, scheduled for 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the main library, 613 Pleasant St.
The hearing addresses these bills:
H. 361, Full-day kindergarten.
H. 363 Dropout prevention / raising the age.
H. 364 Prevent bullying.
H. 368 School suspensions.
H. 369 Minimum age of attendance in kindergarten.
H. 380 Parental responsibilities toward attendance.
H. 381 School administration.
H. 382 Expulsions.
H. 476 Disclosure of league sports information.
H. 477 Mandatory minimum age for school attendance.
S. 252 Public access to state-funded school buildings.
