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House Bill 5744: An Act Raising the Compulsory Attendance Age
Sponsors:
Representatives Diaz, Almeida, Slater, Pacheco and Melo.
Summary:
This bill would raise the compulsory attendance to age 17. Currently, children between 16 and 18 who are "enrolled in school" need written permission from their parents before they can be exempted from the compulsory attendance law. This bill would require children to stay in school until age 17 before their parents could authorize the exemption.
Status:
02/17/2005 (House): Introduced, referred to Health, Education and Welfare Committee.
03/23/2005 (House): Health, Education, and Welfare Committee Hearing, Room 135, State House, at the Rise of the House.
HSLDA's Position:
Oppose.
Action Requested:
Please call all the members of the House Health, Education, and Welfare Committee. If one of them is your own state representative, be sure to identify yourself as a constituent. Use our legislative toolbox http://www.hslda.org/toolbox/ to find your senator. Your message can be as simple as,
"Please vote against House Bill 5744, which would raise the compulsory attendance age. It will raise taxes, but statistics show it will not reduce juvenile crime or the dropout rate, and it will not increase the graduation rate. Students must already stay in school until age 18 unless the parents give written consent. Parents should be trusted."
This bill affects all students, so there is no need to identify yourself as a homeschooler.
Email addresses are listed below, but phone calls are more effective.
The committee members are:
Background:
- Raising the compulsory attendance age from 16 to 17 would subject Rhode Island home educators to the requirements of the homeschool statute one year later than now required. (You do not need to share this reason with your legislators.)
- Raising the compulsory attendance age will not reduce the dropout rate. In fact, the two states with the best high school completion rates, Maryland at 94.5% and North Dakota at 94.7%, compel attendance only to age 16. The state with the lowest completion rate (Oregon: 75.4%) compels attendance to age 18. These figures are three year averages, 1996 through 1998.
- Twenty-nine states only require attendance to age 16. Older children unwilling to learn can cause classroom disruptions and even violence, making learning harder for their classmates who truly want to learn.
- It would restrict parents' freedom to decide if their 16 year old is ready for college or the workforce. Some 16 year olds who are not academically inclined benefit more from valuable work experience than from being forced to sit in a classroom.
- Another significant impact of expanding the compulsory attendance age would be an inevitable tax increase to pay for more classroom space and teachers to accommodate the additional students compelled to attend public schools. When California raised the age of compulsory attendance, unwilling students were so disruptive that new schools had to be built just to handle them and their behavior problems, all at the expense of the taxpayer.
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~Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize that we cannot eat money.~ Cree proverb
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Raising the compulsory attendance age (RI)
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