Chelsea School Superintendent Mary Bourque said she is concerned with legislating an increase in the dropout age “without thinking out the impact and how it should be done, and providing the safety nets to school districts that we will have to have to implement this. There has to be an increased funding stream for all the work that this entails.’’
In making his pitch in his Jan. 24 State of the Union address, Obama said that “when students don’t walk away from their education, more of them walk the stage to get their diploma. When students are not allowed to drop out, they do better.’’
Haverhill School Superintendent James Scully said he sees some merit in raising the dropout age in Massachusetts, “but in many of our high schools we don’t have the funding to address that segment of the population. That needs to be attended to.’’
Scully said he believes his district could keep in school 50 percent of current dropouts with enough funding, and through initiatives such as a partnership it is now developing with Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High School to design programs for students who would not ordinarily qualify for enrollment in that school.
Currently, the dropout age is 18 in 21 states - including New Hampshire and Rhode Island - and 17 in 11 other states. Massachusetts is among 18 states where the age remains at 16, according to Education Week magazine.
In Massachusetts, three bills that would raise the state’s dropout age from 16 to 18 are before the Legislature’s education committee, as are two local measures that would raise the dropout age to 18 in Lawrence and Boston.
The education committee is drafting a comprehensive dropout prevention bill, and as part of it is considering setting the statewide dropout age at 18.
In 2010-11, the statewide dropout rate was 2.7 percent, which officials said was the lowest level in two decades. But the rates in some communities far exceeded the state figure. In Lawrence, for example, the district dropout rate was 8.6 percent, in Haverhill 6.9 percent, in Chelsea 5.8 percent, and in Everett 5 percent.
