Lexington, KY - Gov. Steve Beshear has signed Senate Bill 97, legislation that will allow individual school districts in Kentucky to voluntarily raise the dropout age to 18. Under the bill, once 55 percent of the districts have raised the age limit the law becomes mandatory statewide with four years.
Championed by first lady Jane Beshear, the proposal to raise the dropout age has been sponsored in each of the past five General Assembly sessions by Democratic Rep. Jeff Greer. It was approved by the Democratic-controlled House in each session but failed in the Republican-controlled Senate. A compromise offered by Republican Sen. David Givens - making compliance voluntary until just over half of the state’s districts have raised the age - turned the tide.
By 2018, fewer than 10 percent of Kentucky employers will accept job applicants who lack a high school diploma, according to a Georgetown University forecast reported in the Feb. 15 edition of .
“In today’s world, you can’t get a job without at least a high school diploma. The Military will not accept you without a high school diploma,” said Mrs. Beshear. Kids who don’t graduate from high school “are the people that we find many times homeless. They absorb most of the social services. They’re most often less healthy. And often they end up in our prisons and jails.”
Many students who don’t graduate from high school find themselves on a difficult path in life that too often leads to poverty and little chance of meaningful employment, echoed Fayette County Schools Supt. Tom Shelton, a member of the First Lady Beshear’s “Graduate Kentucky” task force, the group that proposed the age change. “We cannot knowingly allow this for a teenager. We owe it to all children to give them the best chance of a fruitful and productive adult life, which begins with a high school diploma.”
Dropouts from the class of 2008, for example, will cost Kentucky almost $4.2 billion in lost wages over their lifetimes, according to the estimations of the Alliance for Excellent Education.
Shelton plans to ask the Board of Education to increase Fayette county’s dropout age to 18, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.