It became a game of one-upmanship between lawmakers in Raleigh in March, as three bills — two from the Senate and one from the House —were filed in the General Assembly in an effort to raise the statewide compulsory school attendance age.

This is the latest attempt to curb escalating dropout rates throughout the state, which rose to 3.29 percent, or 21,000 students, during the 2003-04 school year, up from 3.23 percent, or 20,000 students, the previous year.
A recent article by The Virginian-Pilot writer Darren Freeman reported that the increase was a result of many 16- and 17-year-olds leaving school before graduating. One source said educators are greatly concerned.

“A slight increase means 1,000 more students drop out,” Marvin Pittman, director of middle-level education at the Department of Public Instruction, was reported as saying. “If that continues every year, you can see what the problem is.”

Sen. John Garwood, R-Alexander, was the first to address the issue when he filed Senate Bill 439, designed to prohibit students from dropping out of school before the age of 17.
Reps. Susan Fisher, D-Buncombe; Becky Carney, D-Mecklenburg; Walter Church, D-Burke; Nelson Dollar, R-Wake; Jean Farmer-Butterfield, D-Wilson; Verla Insko, D-Orange; Deborah Ross, D-Wake; Trudi Walend, R-Henderson, and Jennifer Weiss, D-Wake, submitted House Bill 779 a week later, followed quickly by its Senate companion, Bill 702, sponsored by Sen. Martin Nesbitt, D-Buncombe, and Sen. John Snow, D-Cherokee.

The latter two bills trumped Garwood’s bill by raising the mandatory school age to 18, and increasing the penalty for truancy from a Class Three, with a maximum of 30 days in prison, to a Class One misdemeanor, with a possible jail sentence of six months or more.

Cecil Banks, manager of government relations for the North Carolina Association of Educators, said the NCAE is backing Senate Bill 439.

“We believe young people need to be in school longer to be better educated and prepared for life outside of school,” Banks said.

Hal Young, president of North Carolinians for Home Education, said his organization doesn’t have an official stance on the issue. Young said, however, he personally opposes all three of the proposed bills.

“My concern about them is mainly on the general principle of things,” he said. “There are always going to be people that come to a place where they feel the classroom environment isn’t working for them. They are already ready to go out into the workplace. Requiring them to go to school for another year won’t make up for those who are already lost to the educational process.”

Young said the requirement to keep 16- and 17-year-olds in desks they’ve already abandoned in spirit will play havoc with the school system’s federal scorecard unless educators are willing to make up for any educational shortcomings, or move them off their rolls into another educational venue.

Banks agrees. He said a raised school attendance age will be effective only if the school system restructures on the high school level.

“We have to find a better way to meet the student’s needs,” Banks said. “We need to solve some problems in the schools. We need to be up to the challenge of revamping and adapting to meet the needs of individual children, to make an environment where they can learn and grow. We can’t do things the same old way.”

Some local schools aren’t waiting for new laws or regulations to reorganize and make the necessary changes to keep children in school. Dare County school officials have not only revamped many programs, but they have also taken a long-term approach of helping at-risk students by offering freshman outreach programs, overhauling attendance policies that require students to make up every hour of school they miss, and creating an online credit recovery program, The Virginian-Pilot reported.

As a result, the district lost only 1.74 percent of its students last year, a figure well below the state average. Such an achievement makes a strong case that more laws aren’t the solution. Lawmakers instead need to look at the creative initiatives and grass-roots programs invented out of necessity in the backyards of many local school districts throughout the state.

Karen Welsh is a contributing editor of Carolina Journal.