District may require school until 18
Board looking at change to prevent dropping out
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter
Sixteen-year-olds in the Schenectady City School District may not have an easy escape from school this fall.
   The Schenectady Board of Education is considering a new rule that would make school mandatory until age 18.
   According the state Education Department, individual school boards can vote to change the compulsory school age. However, 17-year-olds who get a job would still be allowed to drop out.
   If the school board votes to make the change, unemployed students must stay through the entire school session that begins when they are 17, even if they turn 18 a day after school starts, according to the law.
   Currently, they can drop out at the start of the first school year after they turn 16.
   New school board member Edward Kosiur made the school age change part of his campaign, promising to work to keep students in school. He said age 16 was simply too young for students to make a decision that would have such longterm ramifications.
   At the same time, members of the board’s policy committee were already discussing making school mandatory until age 18.
   Now, the committee is ready to bring a draft to the full board for a vote. It will be proposed within weeks, school board member Cheryl Nechamen said.
   She said she supports the proposal because students need a diploma. “It is extremely hard to find a job without that high school diploma,” she said.
   The district’s truancy officers work hard to keep students in school now, but many of their techniques don’t work once the student is old enough to legally drop out. At that point, probation officers cannot force the student to attend school, and in-school punishments for truancy tend to encourage the student to officially drop out.
   “We don’t have that leverage,” Nechamen said.
   But the truancy officers do have a good record of getting reluctant 15-year-olds to come to school, and Nechamen said the policy change would allow them to extend that effort to older students.
   Board President Cathy Lewis, who is not on the policy committee, said she had heard criticism from some teachers. They warned that it would be hard to teach students who want to drop out.
   “[ They said] that keeping them there beyond when they want to be there might not be the best idea,” Lewis said.
   She added that she hasn’t formed an opinion on it yet but said she was struck by the experiences of the students who recently graduated with GEDs. Those students dropped out and later took a difficult battery of exams to earn a GED.
   “I don’t know that they would recommend that path,” she said. “I think that a good number of them would say it’s better to stay in school in the first place.”
   Nechamen said she was not persuaded by arguments that it would be hard to teach wannabe dropouts.
   “It’s difficult to teach a 10-yearold if they don’t want to be there,” she said. “It really doesn’t matter on the age.”

Let them drop out if they want, the smaller classes would help those who want to learn by giving the teachers more time to spend per student. Maybe make a law that wouldn't give out welfare to those who don't have a high school diploma or GED, that would be the better route.

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Let them drop out if they want, the smaller classes would help those who want to learn by giving the teachers more time to spend per student. Maybe make a law that wouldn't give out welfare to those who don't have a high school diploma or GED, that would be the better route.

And there should be a fine imposed on parents that have a child under 16 that is a habitual truant. If they are on welfare it comes out of
their check, if they work their check is garnished.

Some parents KNOW what their kids are up to out on the streets and don't give a dam because it's bringing extra money into the
house  

Except that some single parents may have difficulty controlling their kids re: truancy.

I think they should mandate that kids attend pre-k, and that is provided for all kids, because too many kids come into kindergarten not where they should be re: learning ability.  The starting line and early grades (K-3) are critically important in a child's academic career.

Quoted from visitor

I think they should mandate that kids attend pre-k, and that is provided for all kids, because too many kids come into kindergarten not where they should be re: learning ability.  The starting line and early grades (K-3) are critically important in a child's academic career.

MANDATORY PRE-K???????

That is all bullsh!t!! If kids aren't 'where they should be'...then it is the JOB of the teacher to teach them...DUH! And who exactly determines if children are 'where they should be'? The parents or the 'system'?
It's just another example of the 'system' pigeonholing these children!!

And except for making it easier on the kindergarten teacher.....pre-k has not been proven to graduate a 'smarter' kid!!

Quoted from visitor

Except that some single parents may have difficulty controlling their kids re: truancy.

I think they should mandate that kids attend pre-k, and that is provided for all kids, because too many kids come into kindergarten not where they should be re: learning ability.  The starting line and early grades (K-3) are critically important in a child's academic career.

There is a difference between controlling them and allowing them, as said many parents have no involvement in their kids lives or how they act, you should know, how many 13 and 14 year old kids are hanging out at 1 in the morning on a school night, I see it all the time. As far as mandatory pre-k who's goal is it set by, what happens when pre-k students aren't setting the bar high enough to government standards, should we then have a pre-pre-k.

Quoted from visitor

Except that some single parents may have difficulty controlling their kids re: truancy.

I think they should mandate that kids attend pre-k, and that is provided for all kids, because too many kids come into kindergarten not where they should be re: learning ability.  The starting line and early grades (K-3) are critically important in a child's academic career.

First, why don't kids want to go to school?(because it's a mind numbing experience for most)

Second, how is mandating 3 and 4 year olds to school and taking them away from their parent(s) for 6 hours a day solve truency?

How about mandating parents to spend 24hrs a day with their children until they are the age of 8, then hand them to the state for civics schooling?

Logic would dictate that parents spending more time with their children, not less, would help them get them under "control".  Abdicating that responsibility to a school system guarantees the parent will never be the authority.

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Except that some single parents may have difficulty controlling their kids re: truancy.

I think they should mandate that kids attend pre-k, and that is provided for all kids, because too many kids come into kindergarten not where they should be re: learning ability.  The starting line and early grades (K-3) are critically important in a child's academic career.

Mandatory Pre-K are you kidding me, next it will be mandatory Pre Pre K  

As for the single parent issue, many of us were raised in single parent households due to divorce and we did just fine. Dosen't matter if
its a single parent household or not, if a child is having issues the parent HAS to be a parent, some have to make tough choices that are
hard at the time but you do whatever it takes if you love your child and want the best for them.

Visitor I thought you were in law enforcement in some capacity?  Don't you see the young kids and teens out during school hours and out late at night with NO supervision, especially here on the hill. Oh wait police don't patrol here and when they do they just drive right on by,
nothing to see.

This was an additional reason not to vote in Mr. Kosiur, I said at the time that this idea had some appeal in theory, but was unworkable in reality. Parents DO have a terrible time controlling their kids much younger than 18, as visitor states; lots of luck with physically fully developed men and women. Iagree with Henry too, I knew someone who attended MP when it was going downhill and she told me it was nowhere near as bad as Steinmetz JH had been because the worst kids had taken off already, leaving the building nicer for those who wanted to be in school.

That idea that if you start the year at 17 and have a birthday, you still have to finish - like hell, no way you can force an 18 year old in what is still free America to be somewhere he or she doesn't want to be, it is just plain stupid.

What happened to truant officers anyway? When I was in school, when the weather turned nice, you didn't want to feign illness or whatever and then tryto go to Central Park or somewhere like that because they'd be out looking for you at those places.

I didn't necessarily agree with the ideas of the losing candidate for the school board, I've forgotten the poor guy's name.He stressed pre-k as a way to improve learning, but he emphasized QUALITY pre-k, and I was willing to concede that someone with his impressive background and obvious concern for the kids could see a way of making something work that wasn't apparent to me. The other voters, however, largely stayed home, so the turnout went for the machine. That's how you get ideas like forcing 18 year olds to sit in a classroom. We can't even force middle schoolers not to run around in gangs committing starter crimes.

Kindergarten is not what it use to be. The standard now is to be reading, writing, addition and subtraction...it's the stuff we did in first and second grade. Some kids are coming in now not even knowing all their colors and shapes or the alphabet. If they are starting to learn their numbers and letters in kindergarten then they are behind.

A lot of parents teach this at home, but there is too large of a portion who do not. I'd rather parents do it and mandatory pre k not be necessary, but it's unfair to hold teachers to the core curriculum standards when the children are starting out at such radically different points.

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A lot of parents teach this at home, but there is too large of a portion who do not. I'd rather parents do it and mandatory pre k not be necessary, but it's unfair to hold teachers to the core curriculum standards when the children are starting out at such radically different points.

True about kindergarten being different then when we were kids. I went to Horace Mann and I can remember playing, being read to and
taking a nap (or faking it) on a mat.

My grandson is in kindergarten and is writing sentences and reading entire books. Words he doesn't know he sounds out. He didn't go
to Pre-K  but my daughter is a reading teacher so she reads to him every night.

Yesterday was babysitting my one year old grandson and he was holding his "kitty" book and rattling on to himself, it was upside down,
very cute.  

All three of my kids went to Pre-K at Washington Irving and one at Draper. WI was for a few hours a day, just enough for a 4 year old.
And good for me as I was offered a job there as cook and server.  Pre-k was mainly for socializing and coloring and learning colors,
counting to 10 and just having some fun.

Well, since the schools seem to feel that kindergarten isn't soon enough to start getting ready for school, even though that's what it was invented for, at least we could've had somebody intelligent to do it right, but noooo, Mr. Hodgkins didn't have the politicians' support, so he didn't get the vote.
I just this afternoon learned of another family that packed up and moved to get their kids out of this system.

The kids who are going to drop out are showing signs in middle school;

They've already checked out by 6/7/8th grades...want to prevent the drop out rate...get your failed middle school experiences under control. They've started doing that with the k-8 schools.

Maybe the massive high school needs to be split. One huge high school with barely 1/2 the kids graduating....you would have thought by now SOMEONE would have decided to make 2 high schools as the current one is failing miserably.

Listen Lumpy Kosier...schools aren't the new jail cells. You can't keep kids inside until they are 18 because you don't want them on the streets. Create solutions, don't mandate imprisonment.

Yeah, two high schools, neither one overcrowded, in walking distance for most students, one with an ahead-of-it's-time technical program, we couldn't have that. It offended the social engineers.
In these people's minds, the schools are a correctional facility. They own the kids, the earlier they can get them the better, and if their changes to the system have only made things worse, it is the fault of the teachers or maybe because they didn't get more money for social engineering, not because of their dopey ideas.
The kids who are going to fail do show signs in middle school, or earlier. I think maybe some sort of intervention program, OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL, would be a good idea to try. If the kids are not adapting successfully to the school environment, it is highly unlikely that the same schools are going to be able to fix that. The schools already offer a plethora of services to help struggling high-schoolers stay in school and finish. They even offer evening classes for some kids who feel like they have to work to help the family! The problem is, these programs can only help pupils who are motivated in some way. I don't personally feel that the schools can keep wasting resources on the kids who are still unmotivated by the time they reach age 16. That's probably why it was made the dropout age in the first place.
Perhaps some of our not-for-profits could implement some kind of one-on-one extra support for the at-risk kids entering high school. Lord knows we have plenty of those taking up space around here.

Quoted from visitor

Except that some single parents may have difficulty controlling their kids re: truancy.

I think they should mandate that kids attend pre-k, and that is provided for all kids, because too many kids come into kindergarten not where they should be re: learning ability.  The starting line and early grades (K-3) are critically important in a child's academic career.

just like china BRRRRIIIIIILLLIANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

forcing mandatory 18years old is like keeping a 'criminal' in jail for their sentencing....shame on us for making our
public schools locked fortresses(for fu(king safety of course), and promoting parent's arms to government arms....

WTF!!!!!!

no wonder we don't thrive at innovation....

Demolition Man gets truer and truer every day....


Since the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), the education system in China has been geared toward economic modernization.[citation needed] In 1985, the national government ceded responsibility for basic education to local governments through the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party's "Decision on the Reform of the Educational Structure." In unveiling the education reform plan in May 1985, the authorities called for nine years of compulsory education and the establishment of the State Education Commission (created the following month). Official commitment to improved education was nowhere more evident than in the substantial increase in funds for education in the Seventh Five-Year Plan (1986–90), which amounted to 72 percent more than funds allotted to education in the previous plan period (1981–85). In 1986 some 16.8 percent of the state budget was earmarked for education, compared with 10.4 percent in 1984. Since 1949, education has been a focus of controversy in China. As a result of continual intraparty realignments, official policy alternated between ideological imperatives and practical efforts to further national development. But ideology and pragmatism often have been incompatible. The Great Leap Forward (1958–60) and the Socialist Education Movement (1962–65) sought to end deeply rooted academic elitism, to narrow social and cultural gaps between workers and peasants and between urban and rural populations, and to eliminate the tendency of scholars and intellectuals to disdain manual labor. During the Cultural Revolution, universal fostering of social equality was an overriding priority.


The city government of Beijing brings the basics of differential calculus to the masses
The post-Mao Zedong Chinese Communist Party leadership viewed education as the foundation of the Four Modernizations. In the early 1980s, science and technology education became an important focus of education policy. By 1986 training skilled personnel and expanding scientific and technical knowledge had been assigned the highest priority. Although the humanities were considered important, vocational and technical skills were considered paramount for meeting China's modernization goals. The reorientation of educational priorities paralleled Deng Xiaoping's strategy for economic development. Emphasis also was placed on the further training of the already-educated elite, who would carry on the modernization program in the coming decades. Renewed emphasis on modern science and technology led to the adoption, beginning in 1976, of an outward-looking policy that encouraged learning and borrowing from abroad for advanced training in a wide range of scientific fields.
Beginning at the Third Plenum of the Eleventh National Party Congress Central Committee in December 1978, intellectuals were encouraged to pursue research in support of the Four Modernizations and, as long as they complied with the party's "Four Cardinal Principles" they were given relatively free rein. But when the party and the government determined that the strictures of the four cardinal principles had been stretched beyond tolerable limits, they did not hesitate to restrict intellectual expression.
Literature and the arts also experienced a great revival in the late 1970s and 1980s. Traditional forms flourished once again, and many new kinds of literature and cultural expression were introduced from abroad.