Dear Senator,

Please take a minute and consider a few important reasons to reject SB268.  The Governor says if we force 16& 17 year-old dropouts back into the classroom we will be giving them a “second chance”.  You need to know that proponents of SB268 are selling it with a message that is either not complete or not completely accurate.

Elements of deception:

Dropping out is bad:   While dropping out is certainly not the ideal path to success, dropouts often return to school and go on to become better students.  Many move from mediocrity or failure to the top of the class.  Everyone knows this story – many of us have lived it.   The Governor is telling us that time off from school is always a bad thing that we have a crisis requiring desperate measures.  We don’t believe him. There is no crisis and no need for such invasive and expensive legislation.

SB 268 is a new idea:  This legislation is a reincarnation of a bill proposed in 2003.  It began in Nashua when parents of criminal adolescents complained that they were helpless to control their kids.  Incredibly, some lawmakers came up with SB55, a “brilliant idea” to force 16&17 year-old vagrants back into the public school to get them off the street.  By hiding these unruly young people in the classroom, ostensibly to provide them “opportunity”, proponents were willing to rob the rest of the student population of opportunity for a good education.   However, New Hampshire legislators uncovered a deception.  Further investigation revealed that the Nashua parents had allowed their kids to drop out and it was the Nashua police who allowed them to hang out on the streets (state law provides that kids must have written permission from their parents to leave school before age 18).  The legislature determined that that real opportunity for young people could be offered if they had more choices: jobs through a growing and low tax economy, trade schools, apprenticeships, coops, through more careful investments into our public education infrastructure and the like.  Insightful lawmakers rejected SB55 arguing that criminals should be incarcerated in jails, not schools.  Now, the Governor wants to give this bad idea a second chance.  

SB268 will reduce dropout rates:  States with higher compulsory attendance age have higher dropout rates and lower graduation rates on average.*  The Governor’s assertion that SB268 will fix the ‘problem’ of students dropping out of school is simply unfounded.  

SB268 will be free of charge:  The Governor himself has said that SB268 is only a “first step” to school reform while pretending to the legislature that this initiative will be cost free.   SB268 is really a first step to higher property taxes and to a broad-based tax in NH.  Outside the State House Mr. Lynch is holding summits to queue up reform programs while sending SB268 through the system with no fiscal note.  This is deceptive, and probably deliberate.  The NH Dept of Ed estimated that SB55-FN (predecessor to SB268) would cost NH more than $2.7M in FY2007.  The Senate Finance committee voted SB55-FN ITL in 2003 for good reason.  The Governor is hoping we won’t ask to see the price tag this time.

Government knows best: Today the State of New Hampshire trusts this decision to parents. According to current law, after sixteen years of age parents and students may decide it is time to try a different approach.  With SB268 the Governor now wants to take away freedom of choice and force kids back into the classroom for two more years.   Governor Lynch wants you to believe that suddenly, these kids will turn the corner just because the Government is now in control of the decision process. We must stop this steady chipping away at our freedoms.  While there are many students who should attend school to age 18, parents are most knowledgeable and best qualified to decide whether their children should stay in school, and they already have that choice under NH law.  SB268 is a socialist initiative that says the Government knows best. SB268 will take away parental rights and rob our kids of real choices

Mr. Lynch has been tugging at the heartstrings of caring legislators with this poster-boy image of eager, hungry kids desperately shaking at the locked gates to opportunity.  Opportunity’s door is already wide open to some of the best schools in the nation, right here in the “Live Free …” state of NH.  Open to students who might have a future in college academics, open to young people who want to pursue a vocation, there are college prep high schools, trade schools and apprenticeships available to every young person.  Today, without any change in NH law, a high-school dropout can walk back into the school at any time.  We must not allow this unfunded, Big Government mandate on 1200 dropouts to place the education of the other 30,000 willing students at risk.  Don’t let SB 268 take real choices away from parents, raise taxes and create difficult enforcement problems for local officials.

Please, Senator.  All the facts show that SB268 will not work.  Listen to your heart and to your head. If you really care about opportunity for kids, stand up and say NO to SB268!


Sincerely,

Jim Parison
(and many other homeschoolers)

*Some Facts:

• When California increased the compulsory attendance age, taxpayers were forced to pay for a whole new school system to handle the numerous problems these unruly, unwilling students caused.  (February, 2005, publication of the Manhattan Institute's Center for Civic Innovation, "Public High School Graduation and College-Readiness Rates: 1991-2002," by Dr. Jay P. Greene.)
• States which compel attendance only to age 16 have better high school completion rates than states that compel attendance to 17 or 18, on average. (Source: "Dropout Rates in the United States: 2000," pp. 9-10, 40-41; National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, Office of educational Research and Improvement, Doc. No. NCES 2002-114.)
• States which compel attendance only to age 16 also have lower dropout rates than states that compel attendance to 17 or 18, on average. (Source: same as above.)
• According to statistics published by the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Dropout Prevention, a higher compulsory attendance age is not correlated to a reduction in juvenile crime.  (Source: "Juvenile Arrests 1999." Washington, D.C.: Office of Juvenile (Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2000.)
• A study at Cornell University found that increasing the compulsory attendance age in New York State would not accomplish the intended goals and would require substantial additional funding. (Policy Analysis on the Efficacy of Increasing the Compulsory School Attendance Age October 4, 2002, Professor Rosemary J. Avery, Cornell University)
• SB 55-FN ,  AN ACT raising the age at which a child may terminate his or her public education.  FISCAL IMPACT:  The Department of Education indicates this bill will increase state education trust fund expenditures and local revenue by $2.5 million in FY 2007 and increase local expenditures by an indeterminable amount in FY 2004 and each year thereafter.