Let Kids Drop Out: Why Compulsory Education Harms Even the Most Gifted Students – The

On Jul 6, 2023

Long after students have returned to in-person learning, grim headlines still depict the educational hit that students took during the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, a Stanford economist recently predicted that the learning loss for students whose schools shifted to virtual learning will cost them $70,000 in lifetime earnings.

To right the wrongs of the pandemic, the solution is “more school,” at least in North Carolina, where lawmakers are alarmed by rising dropout rates. A bipartisan bill would raise the age of compulsory education from 16 to 18, a requirement held by the majority of states. (READ MORE: The Biden Administration’s Title IX Revisions Provoke Backlash From Left and Right)

But is attending school until age 18 really the best way to prepare for entering the workforce? Or have policymakers just lost their imaginations?

New Hampshire state representative Travis Corcoran has not lost his. He recently introduced HB 399, which would give New Hampshire students a way to test out of high school and receive a high school equivalency certificate. In an interview with The American Spectator, he called the state’s public schools “super expensive government-run schools that cater to the lowest common denominator and have a multi-decade-long track record of accomplishing precious little.”

Corcoran’s bill is the latest instance of a conservative education policy that sets itself apart by pledging to promote freedom. He emphasizes that his bill does not necessarily present the choice to drop out. Students are still free to choose to attend a faith-based school or no school at all after receiving the certificate.

The bill, he writes, is for “exceptional students who can prove that they have mastered all of the content expected of average students — and more.”

“The stakeholders who support the bill include tons of homeschoolers, gifted students, tutors who work with gifted students, and others,” he continues. He says that the bill’s opponents are “Democrats” and “public school teachers who live off of tax dollars.”

“Several gifted teenagers I spoke to told me that, in fact, they’d rather go to college, engage in independent study, [or] research nuclear power preparatory to a career in the Navy,” Corcoran told The American Spectator.

While the newfound scrutiny of compulsory education, at least as Corcoran envisions it, could benefit the most gifted students, it could also benefit those who struggle the most.

In his 2020 book The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice, Fredrik deBoer describes students who no superstar teacher, charter school, or standardized test preparation can help. DeBoer, who taught at both the K–12 and collegiate level, is one of few people on the left who acknowledges inherent differences in academic ability. Schools, he says, should close skill gaps that exist because of socioeconomic status. DeBoer argues that when significant skill gaps remain, students should be able to drop out at age 12.

Though Chalkbeat notes that data on dropouts are hard to come by, available data seems to support deBoer’s proposal. The top-rated reasons for dropping out of high school, according to the National Dropout Prevention Center, include chronic absenteeism and not liking school. Some of these students, as the National Dropout Prevention Center notes, receive insufficient support from their families or their schools. Others are likely the students described by deBoer who find school unbearable because of their ability level.

One need not be a bleeding-heart liberal like deBoer to worry that education might be the cause of, not solution to, adverse outcomes, especially for students born with a disadvantage even harder to fix than poverty: low academic aptitude.

When it comes to the decision to drop out, George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan says that “deference to parents is the least-bad option.”

In his 2018 book, The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money, Caplan argues that the value of education has more to do with what a high school or college diploma signals to employers. Diplomas signal students’ ability to withstand hours of boredom, follow directions, and other skills. The expectation that a diploma equates to these skills — whether or not graduates actually have them — is why college graduates do better financially than high school graduates, and high school graduates do better than dropouts.

In an interview with The American Spectator, Caplan suggested that the best way to prepare for work is to work. Vocational training, he asserted, is “not going to be a big factor” in preparing students for the workforce “compared to all of the informal job training that happens on every job every day.”

He argued that while dropping out of school “limits upward mobility,” it “also limits downward mobility into crime and permanent unemployment.”

For students who are frequently suspended or register lackluster academic performance, getting introduced to meaningful work opportunities at an earlier age could keep them from earning a living through crime.

Caplan said that if low-quality teachers heavily populate schools, “Instead of keeping kids in school until the schools work, how about let[ting] them out until the schools work?”

Conservatives are at the forefront of letting parents decide how best to prepare their children for college or the workforce. They are also questioning the value of compulsory education, a practice Corcoran says dates back to the Progressive Era and was “designed with a few key goals in mind, among them, training children to accept the prevailing social order.”

What Corcoran calls “one-size-fits-all schooling” — mandating that students attend school at the same time and learn the same curriculum — no longer fits the needs of the students whose academic abilities are at either end of the bell curve.

Though scaling back compulsory education defies nearly 100 years of tradition, let kids drop out.

Shelby Kearns is an associate editor at Campus Reform.

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