Are "Age 18" dropout laws worth it?

What would an "Age 18" dropout law mean for the state of Kentucky.

Well, according to Jim Waters of The Bluegrass Institute, a free-market think tank:

• 11,400 students would be added to the Kentucky school system. These are, Waters argues, students who have "already mentally dropped out."

• The cost of those students could be as much as $41.7 million in Support Education Excellence in Kentucky (SEEK) funds. 

• And a Bluegrass Institute analysis proffers that the additional buildings required to support that many more students could cost as much as $150 million more. That's to say nothing of the cost of hiring additional teachers and paying their health care and pension benefits, Waters writes.

"Supporters of the dropout law have the mistaken notion that such coercion will result in a great improvement in the number of those students getting high school diplomas and conquering the world," Waters says. "But while all of us want kids to stay in school, that doesn’t mean government mandates can change the minds of teens who give up on school."