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Five men from the Bill O'Brien statehouse, including Paul Mirski and David Bates, wish to lower the dropout age to 16.
The national, seasonally adjusted jobless rate for high school graduates in January 2011 was 9.4% The employment-to-population ratio for this demographic was 54.6%.
The national, seasonally adjusted jobless rate for those with less than a high school diploma in January 2011 was 14.2%. The employment-to-population ratio for this demographic was 38.7%.
A look at the data shows a consistent 5% or so increase in joblessness between those who drop out of high school vs. those who earn a diploma.
Some prefer real-life stories to data:
Alyssa Ouellett, now a senior at an alternative high school program in Raymond, told lawmakers that, with a choice, she would have dropped out at 16. Ouellet said she went from failing all of her classes freshman year to getting all A's this year.
"If you guys pushed the age back to 16, it would be making a lot of kids make a lot of stupid decisions that won't help them in the future," she said.
What's that? You want to hear from a voice with more experience?
Gary Hunter, who works in dropout prevention in the Manchester schools. Hunter said he has "worked with at-risk kids, since I was an at-risk kid" and today supervises staff who offer a wide range of alternative educational programs. He said the law requiring students to stay in school until 18 forced schools to ask businesses what they looked for in workers and ask students what they needed to learn.
"It's kicked up the biggest reform movement I've seen in my 25 years in education," Hunter said.
It is heartening to see the Bill O'Brien statehouse finally focus on unemployment. But I don't think even Democrats expected them to focus on increasing unemployment.
(birched earlier, and with apologies to Mike Emm who - once again - beat me to it.)
