Too young to drop out

Maryland should take a hint from Montgomery County.

PERHAPS NOW that its largest, and one of its best, school systems has embraced an effort to make it harder for students to drop out, Maryland will consider changing the compulsory age of school attendance. Such a change wouldn't be a magic solution to the dropout problem but it could help.

The Montgomery County Board of Education, jolted by a drop in its graduation rate, voted unanimously last week to urge the state to increase the age at which a student can drop out from 16 to 18. Montgomery's rate fell to 87.4 percent, still above the state average but the county's lowest in a decade. The state rate rose slightly from 85.1 percent to 85.2 percent. Maryland's compulsory age of school attendance is a holdover from the early 1900s, when an agrarian society saw the advantages of young people returning to the fields to help support their families. The dropout age of 16 is still the law in about half of the country, but Maryland is one of only two states in the mid-Atlantic region with an age of compulsory attendance less than 17; the legal dropout age in Virginia and the District is 18.

Past efforts to raise the dropout age have failed in the General Assembly. Sen. Catherine E. Pugh (D-Baltimore), sponsor of past efforts, says that she will try again when the legislature convenes in January. We hope that the State Board of Education, which has not supported previous efforts, will reconsider. The board is right to stress programs to identify and support students at risk.

Nonetheless, studies show that one reason students drop out is because they are permitted to. States that have raised the dropout age (there have been eight in the past decade) have reported decreases in dropout rates. Maryland, in many ways an education leader, should no longer lag on this issue.