Obama's intentions are good, but just saying "No Dropouts" isn't enough

Those involved in the fight to raise the nation’s woeful dropout rate have been waiting a long time for a president to elevate the issue to a level commensurate with the threat this epidemic poses to our nation’s future.

So it was pleasing to hear President Barack Obama say in his third State of the Union address that our nation must commit to ensuring that more students “walk the stage to get their diploma.”

But the president's prescriptive advice — not allowing students to “walk away from their education” by having every state require all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn 18 — demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem at hand.

Put simply: The act of dropping out isn’t about age – it’s about options.

In our work serving dropouts in partnership with more than 50 school districts across the United States, the teachers, mentors and advocates of The American Academy’s NoDropouts program see young men and women who left school because they become parents, become sick, need to earn full-time wages or are scared of bullies and gangs.

These problems have nothing to do with how old they are.

That’s why states like California, which already mandates high school attendance through the age of 18, don’t have substantially different graduation rates from states like Washington, where students are permitted to drop out at the age of 17. Clearly, just saying students can’t drop out doesn’t mean they won’t drop out.

That’s not to say that raising the age of mandatory school attendance isn’t a good first step: It is — but only if that step is accompanied by a firm commitment to tackling the issues that are really driving students from school in the first place. 

Make no mistake: President Obama deserves credit for reaching across party lines to seek education solutions that work — from addressing problems with No Child Left Behind to eliminating conflicts that pit the best interests of school administrators against the best interests of their students.   

But simply moving students from the “dropouts” column to the “truants” column doesn’t touch those problems. And in some scenarios it could make things quite a bit worse. 

So until we’re ready to find ways to help homeless students pay rent, to provide childcare for teen parents, to provide safety for students who are fearful of gangs and bullies, it does no good to “fix” compulsory attendance laws.

Students need options that help them continue their educations when other obstacles stand in the way.

In districts across the United States, NoDropouts students are brought back to school through alternative learning programs that provide the flexibility and support they need to complete their studies.

These students include Steven, who had to leave school to support his family; and Tyler, who was expelled after making one very brief and very bad decision; and Esperansa, who couldn't afford transportation after moving away from a difficult family situation when she was 17; and Maxine, who was kicked out of her private school when she became pregnant.

They're all graduates, now — not because someone told them they weren't allowed to be dropouts, but because someone committed to giving them the flexibility and support they needed to finish.

If we don’t provide such options, we’re not doing them any good by raising the age at which they can legally drop out — we’re only masking the problem.

Rebekah Richards is a former resident of Washington and Chief Academic Officer of The American Academy. For more information on the NoDropouts program, visit www.NoDropouts.com