You should have to be an adult to throw away your education, says Democratic mayoral hopeful and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
New York City’s legal dropout age should be raised from 17 to 18 to discourage kids from leaving high school early, Quinn said yesterday.
As mayor, she said she would push to boost the age, which was raised from 16 to 17 in 2005.
“Anything less than 100 percent graduation rate is unacceptable, and we, as a city, must strive to change this and take measures to correct it,” Quinn said.
While there will be no school police to enforce the policy, Quinn said that merely raising the requirement can make a difference in the eyes of a troubled teenager.
Last year, 9,000 students — nearly 12 percent — dropped out of city high schools. That’s still far better than 2006, when nearly 40 percent of students dropped out.
“It makes a difference for counselors and teachers. When you tell a child, ‘You can’t actually do that until you’re 18,’ we know it’s going to cause some children to rethink it,” said Quinn, who has the support of state Assembly Education Committee Chairwoman Cathy Nolan. The age to legally drop out is 18 in 22 other states. That seemed to be the only bit of good news to come from the results of the state’s tough new standardized tests, in which scores dropped by 30 points.
The average annual income for dropouts in recent years was about $8,000 less than that of a high school graduate, Quinn said.
The proposed move comes as Mayor Bloomberg claims the state of city education is good when measured by how we’re closing achievement gap with students from affluent suburbs.
“Our students have virtually eliminated that gap in math proficiency, and over the past seven years they’ve cut the gap in English competence by more than half,” Bloomy said in his weekly radio address.