While Governor Noem and the Legislature wrangle over how to force more education on kids, Representative Lana Greenfield (R-2/Doland) wants to give kids less education. The former public school teacher turned enemy of public education has filed House Bill 1232, which would let kids drop out of school at age 16.
South Dakota started requiring kids to stay in school until age 18 in the 2010–2011 school year, following the passage of 2009 SB 126. We still let sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds out of school if they enroll in a GED test prep program and successfully pass that test. But Rep. Greenfield apparently believes we can’t give our kids too much education.
HB 1232 has been referred to House Education, which Representative Greenfield chairs, but surprisingly, she hasn’t jumped at the chance to place her get-out-of-school-early bill on her own calendar. She has rounded up some conservative co-sponsors, including Representative Tom Brunner and Senators Brock Greenfield, Justin Cronin, and Ryan Maher… all four of whom voted to raise the compulsory age of schooling from 16 to 18 in 2009. It will be interesting to hear from those sponsors whether they are just doing Representative Greenfield a favor or whether they have really changed their minds about requiring kids to stay in school until they turn 18.
Related Reading:
- Fifteen states let kids drop out at 16. Ten allow dropping out at 17. 24 states and D.C. make kids stick with school until age 18. Texas makes kids go until they turn 19.
- A 2014 study found that early compulsory school attendance laws in the United States reduced inequality in school attendance by race and economic class.
- Requiring girls to stay in school until age 16 slightly reduced teen births in Norway and the U.S.
- States with higher compulsory school attendance ages do not see higher graduation rates.
- According to the State Department of Education, comparing data from the 2009-2010 school year (before we raised the compulsory school attendance age to 18) and the 2017-2018 school year, 53 school districts had lower dropout rates last year than in 2009–2010, 58 had higher dropout rates, and 38 districts had the same dropout rate. (Tune in to the hearing to see if Rep. Greenfield cites that statistic!)
She is just trying to recruit uneducated wingnut voters to the ranks.Nothing screams wingnut like the dumbing down of potential voters.
Lana should have pulled her fat knuckleheaded son out of school. He obviously spent too many years learning things.
@CIRD … Listening to him ramble on is painful. How can you speak that many words and not convey any coherent or pertinent information?
Schoolin’, Porter. It was schoolin’.
Will the lege make civics class mandatory before a 16 year old drops out, or does dropping out satisfy that requirement?
If the legislature really wanted to help struggling students, it would fund the creation of an alternative option for students who do not succeed in the traditional school settings, an alternative catered to different learning needs and styles. Writing off students (or anyone for that matter) really is never the answer – certainly not in the long term.
Looking over House Ed so far this session, is there a theme for the bills that have been moved to the floor? Taken as a whole, what is House Ed’s view for the future of public education and the public school students in SD?
Meanwhile in Sweden, 15 year old Greta Thunberg has dropped out of school to devote her time to climate change.
This young lady knows what she is talking about, she is informed and articulate, two words republicans and climate deniers hate.
Now she is taking her fight across Europe as the movement grows, if Americans are lucky maybe they will deliver their message here with other nations joining them.
Wouldn’t it be fun if they bring baby blimp Trump with them?
o is right. I don’t think you can give up on any kid, and you shouldn’t give them an easy out, and a reason to give up.
The Rapid City district had several alternative programs and avenues to address struggling students.
Back in 2000, we found the biggest problems occurred in the transition between middle school and high school, so we went about trying to figure out how to shore that up without a lot of cost, because the state wasn’t handing out money to address the issue.
We started “thinking like a student” to figure out how to counteract self-destructive behavior. A lot of kids fell behind from the first quarter of high school and it went downhill from there. You could see which students were going to have problems by the number of absences they racked up in the first two or three quarters of high school. The district toughened up the truancy system. The district spent some effort in “coring” certain courses they needed to graduate and front loaded them during the morning. Most students came to school in the morning, then skipped in the afternoon. We loaded their electives, the courses they really wanted, into the afternoon so they would stick around.
If they were still having issues, there was always the alternative program that was available, where education was taken at the students’ pace and individualized as much as possible. I got to attend a few of the graduation ceremonies for the alternative high programs, and they are very moving events. The graduates got to speak about their own particular difficulties and their determination to finish school. They got an opportunity to thank specific teachers and their parents/boyfriends/girlfriends and anyone else that helped them through and encouraged them.
As long as you have a good programs to allow students to “drop in,” you can mitigate the problem of dropping out.
Our larger districts have implemented programs that serve students who would otherwise be lost, such as the autistic and marginally capable. School is a burdensome task for these kids, and they don’t like it, but they get the message that someone cares and that opportunities are being made for them. Letting them drop out at 16 is a solution that dumps them into a society that doesn’t want them and doesn’t care what happens to them. These are the kids who once populated the state mental institutions of the kind we closed down 30 to 40 years ago. My spouse is an educational assistant at Aberdeen Central in one of these programs.
These are the people that Hitler and his cost accountants termed useless eaters. The Third Reich did not want to provide money to deal with them, so they were the first victims of the program of elimination that became the Holocaust.
What is the thinking, if any, behind this measure?
Corey,
I’ve always wondered what is required to be a bill co-sponsor? Do the co-sponsors actually read these bills? I’m better a majority of the time the co-sponsor just hears a brief explanation of the bill.
In my mind education is cheap compared to the alternatives. Alternatives being jail or welfare recipients. I know the smaller districts can not support some of the alternatives for kids who struggle in the traditional classroom, so there should be state support provided to let these kids attend the alternates classes offered in the bigger districts.
I think the motivation for this bill may be frustration with the implementation of SB 73, juvenile justice reform. Because we have robbed many schools of the tools they used to cope with kids who don’t want to be in school, some legislators feel we ought to sacrifice their future for the sake of the rest of their school community.
We are indeed shirking our responsibility to help kids be as prepared as possible for life when we let them give up on themselves at age 16. But in South Dakota we’re doing that whether or not they’re physically in the school building in many communities, particularly smaller ones far away from alternative programs. SB 73, i.e.juvenile justice reform, has been catastrophic for school environments and for the kids who have been taught there are no consequences for property crimes or truancy other than a $100 fine. The state told the schools to deal with problem kids in their home communities, promising local programming to help them do that, all in the name of keeping kids whose only crimes were nonviolent (including property crimes) and/or truancy out of the correctional system. It was done because our state’s rate of incarcerating kids was far above the national average and because we shouldn’t be “putting kids we were mad at in jail.”
The state has saved millions and millions of dollars in juvenile justice expenses by telling judges not to send kids to the correctional facilities, therefore allowing Gov. Daugaard to close and dispose of those facilities, all the time proclaiming SB 73’s success because referrals to the facilities had magically dropped! Dollars originally appropriated for replacement programs have reverted to the state treasury because the state “underestimated the time it would take to ramp up” the programs. Even today, most schools in my district see little if any replacement programming that addresses the needs. Short staffing, long miles, turnover in trained staff because of poor working conditions, expecting nonfunctional families to participate in “functional family therapy”, all share parts of the blame. See SB 67, which is meant to reverse some of the ideals of SB 70. SB 70 had the right idea, but mostly what Pierre has done so far is take away the tools that schools had to deal with truant kids, and try to replace them on the cheap. Millions of dollars less are being spent on juveniles in the meantime, and we’re paying for it in oh so many ways, starting with overflowing prisons, and kids who don’t know the meaning of consequences for their actions until they hit 18 and get charged as adults.
Good question, Scott! I don’t think there’s any requirement for becoming a co-sponsor; one just signs the sponsor sheet, and we’re off! Had I the pleasure of legislating, I would make a point of not signing my name to any bill as a co-sponsor before reading the entire thing.
Great explanation, Senator Wismer, and disappointing to hear the state can’t figure out how to solve a problem without digging itself another hole.
Simply letting kids who are having trouble with the law drop out is the kind of visionless solution that only someone like Lana Greenfield could come up with. She’s basically throwing kids away, saying there’s nothing we can or should do to help those young men and women get an education and find a place for themselves in society. We can do better.
The extraction industry reps trolled the WY high schools asking folks to drop out to work the oil/gas fields or coal mines. “Do you want a new pick-up truck, kid?”