Elwood: Punitive approaches illustrate lack of understanding

Columbia's Free Times features in its current edition a letter from Harvey Elwood, Jr., on the recent proposal to withhold drivers' licenses from students who drop out of school. Elwood pegs the measure as "punitive" and offers his own view:

Once again, the South Carolina House Education Subcommittee is considering a bill sponsored by Rep. Tom Young Jr., R-Aiken, designed to deny drivers licenses to students who miss seven unexcused days of school as a deterrent to keep them from dropping out.
Last year, I along with several good citizens questioned our legislative leaders and asked that a more proactive approach to the state’s dropout problem be considered. Several good proposals were submitted and we can only hope that a more sound and innovative approach will be considered.

The problem of high school dropouts is not new. However, across this nation programs exist that are working well to address this very troubling situation. Even cities like Columbia, under its new leadership, have come up with better ways of helping children succeed in making it through school — programs that inspire hope and provide real incentives for students to complete their education.

In my opinion, government must reach outside itself to find answers that produce the best result for our young people. Punitive approaches only show our lack of understanding the problem and our inability to deal with it. It’s just like a parent punishing a child as an alternative to better parenting or parenting skills.

How many subcommittee hearings have called in experts on this very issue? How many elected officials have visited programs making a difference in stopping students from dropping out?

It’s easy to be a reactionary; the real skill is to foresee issues before they become a problem — and when they do, to have the best possible plan available and show the best side of our creativity as leaders.

We can no longer punish children as the victims of a failed educational policy or system.
Instead, we must address our responsibility as adult leaders, educators and parents to fix those problems. After all, we can’t expect the children to fix something that was broken long before they got here.

Harvey Elwood Jr.
Orangeburg, S.C.

Bill proposes to leave high school dropouts idle in the streets

Again, South Carolina lawmakers propose to criminalize poverty and the poor judgment that stems often from few options. Consider the plight of teenagers growing up in poverty -- this isn't difficult; there are hundreds of thousands of them -- who see one big difference between attending high school classes Monday through Friday and holding down a "right-to-work-for-less" job at a fast food restaurant or a local body shop: a paycheck. All they need is a set of wheels and gas money.

Not so fast.

South Carolina legislators are debating whether to suspend driving licenses of students who drop out of school. Educators in the area are split on the bill’s effectiveness. The bill, which was considered Wednesday in a House subcommittee, provides for suspending the license of a teen who leaves school, is expelled or accumulates more than seven unexcused absences.

Schools would be required to report the absences of 15- to 17-year-olds to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Thirty seconds of an internet search tells me that

S.C. compulsory education code sets the age at 17. Exceptions in the code allows a minor to leave school at age 16 with approval from the court of jurisdiction. (S.C. Code, Education, Article 1, Sect: 59-65-10(A) to Sect: 59-65-30 (C)

So even sixteen-year-olds can legally leave school enrollment under current state law, but the new proposal would leave that sixteen-year-old cooling his heels on the porch or driving without a license.

And does anyone else share my view that schools and school districts have enough to do without reporting student absences to the Department of Motor Vehicles? The same lawmakers who shout so loudly against a "nanny state" seem to love making schools play the nanny when it suits them.

Devon Smith, principal of Crescent High School in Iva-based Anderson School District 3, said he thought the proposal didn’t meet the needs of the student.

“It’s just not nearly as simple as the legislators think. There are a lot of other issues surrounding why kids drop out of school,” Smith said. “What if that child has to work to support the family? How are they going to do that if they lose their license?”

Smith said his school’s dropout rate, or the number of students the school cannot account for at the end of their senior year, is 3.5 percent, or about seven students. The bill would not help students as much as it would hinder schools, he said.

Ralph Dillingham, principal of the Anderson County Alternative School, said the move sounded like another layer of bureaucracy.

“I think the idea is good to try to encourage kids in school,” Dillingham said. “But the enforcement of that is just another something the schools would be required to do. That would be my only concern. Is it the right place to try to enforce this? It seems to me the burden for supervising this would fall to schools but there wouldn’t be any more resources to oversee it with.”

The Anderson County Alternative School provides a middle school and high school setting for students across the county who have been expelled and chose to attend the school.

Dillingham said he was not familiar with the particulars of the bill, but felt it would be unfair to penalize students like those in his school who are technically expelled, but are attending school.

I want students to stay in school and graduate, too. But I've known plenty of students whose family suffered when a single parent suffered an illness, had no insurance, and lost a job in our right-to-work-for-less state. Such students, even at age 15 or 16, find that budget cuts to public assistance mean the Hamburger Helper doesn't stretch very far, and that even a menial job at McDonald's comes with perks like meals. Who's the criminal? We, who agree to cutting holes in the social safety net we pretend to hold up for the poorest and weakest among us, or the teenagers who choose a paying job over remedial reading?

Difficult question. But I'm not ready to criminalize poverty just yet.