Lynch wants to make school mandatory until 18

[Kat Kanning]

Bad bad bad lynch-thing.


News - November 8, 2005

Lynch: Make school mandatory until 18
By SCOTT BROOKS
Union Leader Staff
http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showa.html?article=62831

CONCORD ? Gov. John Lynch vowed yesterday to push for legislation that would block students from dropping out of school before their 18th birthday.

"We must make it clear to our children that we are not going to give up on them, or let them give up on themselves," the governor said at a State House press conference.

New Hampshire law currently allows students to leave school after they turn 16, provided they have written approval from a parent or guardian. That law has been on the books since 1903.

The new bill, which has yet to be drafted, would not take effect until the 2008-09 school year.

Lynch said the bill is merely the first step as he and state lawmakers try to lower New Hampshire's dropout rate, which ranked 15th nationwide in one recent survey.

About 2,500 students drop out of New Hampshire high schools each year, according to the state's Department of Education. Officials estimate that one in seven high schoolers will not make it through to graduation.

Those figures are sunnier than a 2002 estimate, released by the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy, which claimed the actual ratio was one in four.

"Of course, even one dropout is cause for concern," said state Education Commissioner Lyonel Tracy, who has disputed the Center for Public Policy estimate. "But these annual numbers are unacceptable."

Lynch, who was joined by more than a dozen lawmakers at yesterday's conference, said the time is right to change the compulsory-attendance age, despite repeated failures to do so over the past decade.

A similar proposal died in the state Senate two years ago, in part because it did not call for programs to keep troubled students on the right track.

Members of the Senate's education committee said the same fate would likely befall Lynch's proposal unless the bill includes provisions to help those students.

"You can't just shove them back into a setting where they're clearly struggling," said the committee's chairman, Sen. Peter Bragdon, R-Milford.

Sen. Dick Green, a fellow Republican on the committee, said he was confident the new bill would be more comprehensive than previous incarnations.

"I am not going to support legislation that puts children, 17 and 18, in classrooms just to take up space," he said.

Green said the bill would create new expenses for local schools, since they would have more students to educate, but he and Lynch agreed the state's current education-funding system could accommodate those increases.

The federal government recently awarded New Hampshire a $2.1 million grant to expand its dropout-prevention program. The program involves 11 high schools with above-average dropout rates.

Fifteen states currently prevent students from dropping out of school until they turn 18, according to data supplied by the governor's office.

[FTL_Ian]

Boo!  Hiss!

[KBCraig]

This is horrible.

Texas is one of those states that compel school attendance until 18. (Luckily, private school counts, and homeschooling is a private school.)

The result is classrooms full of bored troublemakers, who could at least be learning some job or life skills if they weren't imprisoned at school.

[Michael Fisher]

OMG, I just logged on to post this same story from the Concord Monitor.

What are we going to do? ?How can we stop them? ?How can we let them do this to children? ? ?

They're pushing the government into every aspect of children's lives more and more each day! ?A few weeks ago, they cracked down on children's MySpace accounts, ? sending home letters warning parents about online social networking between children after one girl was caught posting photos of a party online.


http://gamma.unionleader.com/article.aspx?articleId=1de96e9e-1ff9-4797-a0fe-941be173fa91

[Kat Kanning]

The problem for homeschoolers is that they'd probably require reporting/testing until age 18 instead of 16 also.

[jgmaynard]

I just can't believe Dick Green is on the correct side of an issue! LOL

JM

[GT]

On the flip side. If a staight A student gets caught with a bottle of Tylenol or other over the counter "drug" they get kicked out out under the Zero Tolerance policies.

[KBCraig]

No, it's worse than kicking them out. They force them to stay, but in "alternative school".

[AlanM]

I have been talking to folks at the store today about Lynch's proposal. At first some people thought it was a good idea, but after I brought up that kids who would have quit school at 16 aren't going to suddenly like school at 17 or 18. I talked of how some kids are not meant to be in schools, that they don't learn that way. It has nothing to do with intelligence, and everything to do with being different. Those people who at first liked Lynch's idea, saw my point and changed their minds.

[AlanM]

This is really bad. If this passes, the forces of control will become more powerful and more greedy for more control. Lynch really sucks!!!!

[AlanM]

I just sent emails to my representatives urging them to oppose Lynch's proposal.

[Fluff and Stuff]

So, Lynch is saying that he wants people that hate school with extreme prejudice to be forced to stay in school or go to prison?  Well, that is just about the stupidest thing I have ever heard.  You know, one of the major news stories today was related to this.  Apparently, a student at a high school in TN hated school so much he shot and tried to kill three principals.  Lynch?s proposal had terrible timing.  Now some NH teachers and administrators might think that Lynch wants them to die.

Someone should write a letter to the editor about this.

[Dave Ridley]

The state rep at the Manchester Porce meeting was saying what Lynch will do is stay mostly non controversial until he wins his first re election, then out comes the authoritarian agenda.  Maybe this is the start of that, or a precursor.

[tracysaboe]

We should get some of our guys to try to introduce legislation that would end compulsitory schooling in the state at 14 or something.

I don't know. are their any reps who believe in the seperation of school and state?

Tracy

[Fluff and Stuff]

We should get some of our guys to try to introduce legislation that would end compulsitory schooling in the state at 14 or something.

I don't know. are their any reps who believe in the seperation of school and state?

Tracy

Oh just go the AK route.  In AK, kids don't have to go to school.