- Obama wades into issue of raising dropout age, By Tamar Lewin, January 25, 2012, New York Times: “President Obama’s State of the Union call for every state to require students to stay in school until they turn 18 is Washington’s first direct involvement in an issue that many governors and state legislators have found tough to address. While state legislative efforts to raise the dropout age to 18 have spread in recent years, many have had trouble winning passage. Last year, for example, such legislation was considered in Alaska, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland and Rhode Island – but only Rhode Island actually changed its law…”
- Missouri, Illinois educators debate raising high school dropout age, By Jessica Bock, January 26, 2012, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “The legal age at which students in Missouri and Illinois can drop out of high school has inched up to 17 in recent years. Now, President Barack Obama wants states to do more. In his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, he called on every state to require students to stay in high school until they either graduate or turn 18. But some educators and researchers question the cost and effectiveness of such a measure. And they say that truly addressing the dropout problem requires far more than changing a number…”
- In Ohio, dropout law hard to enforce, By Charlie Boss, January 26, 2012, Columbus Dispatch: “During Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Barack Obama urged states to require students to stay in school until they graduate or turn 18 – a law already in effect in Ohio and 19 other states. Still, at least 23,000 Ohio teens dropped out in the 2010-11 school year. And only a small number of those kids took advantage of an Ohio provision that lets them ‘officially’ leave school if they’re at least 16, have a full-time job and have permission from a parent and the district. Most of those 23,000 were out of school illegally and could face penalties – if they could be tracked down…”
- City students at small public high schools are more likely to graduate, study says, By Winnie Hu, January 25, 2012, New York Times: “New York City teenagers attending small public high schools with about 100 students per grade were more likely to graduate than their counterparts at larger schools, according to new findings from a continuing study released on Wednesday night. The findings are part of a study that tracked the academic performance of more than 21,000 students who applied for ninth grade admission at 105 small high schools, mainly in Brooklyn and in the Bronx, from 2005 to 2008. The study appeared to validate the Bloomberg administration’s decade-long push to create small schools to replace larger, failing high schools…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty