Obama’s Proposal: Forbid Dropping Out
Posted: January 27th, 2012 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 1 Comment »
Robert Pondiscio blogs:
President Obama used his State of the Union address last night to propose requiring students to stay in high school until they either graduate or turn 18. “We know that when students aren’t allowed to walk away from their education, more of them walk the stage to get their diploma,” he said.
Perhaps so, but let’s be honest: what’s the value of a diploma that is conferred by coercion? And where’s the win in forcing kids to stay in “dropout factory” schools against their will and where they get seat time and nothing of use or relevance?
Listening to the President, I was reminded of an idea floated by Michael Goldstein, founder of Boston’s MATCH Charter school a few years back.
That’s funny. I thought the same thing. Didn’t I float an idea a few years back?
Robert summarizes it better than me. Go read it on his blog.
Glad you blogged about this. I was thinking about it during the State of the Union as well. At PCA, we have a lot of students who are mandated to be in school – mostly by our legal system for kids on probation, but some from programs who mandate they have to be working or going to school to stay in the program, and some who are still not legally “allowed” to drop out because they are only 14 or 15. This rarely works if the kid is not looking to make a change. The closest analogy I can make is to an addict – if the addict is not ready to make a change, you aren’t going to be able to make them quit the habit. I see the same thing with kids who don’t want the opportunities that education can bring. We have the conversations over and over, and we coerce as much as we can and latch on to any small shift in mindset, but in the end, unless the kid decides he/she wants to do school, it is frequently a losing battle. Internally, we discuss this within the paradigm of the Transtheoretical model of behavior change, and these kids in the “Pre-Contemplation” stage are just going to keep fighting the system. There are no clear-cut sure-fire ways to move kids faster through these stages of change.
I am really curious to hear what a plan to keep these kids engaged would look like, or what the governmental response would be when a 17-year old decides to drop out. The current system in place for the 14 and 15 year olds, from my experience, is quite ineffective, and the success stories come not from governmental intervention but from schools and programs that are there when the student realizes what their life opportunities are with no education and no skills.