The Fiona Phenomena

My colleagues are always surprised – I’m not an advocate for state policy that raises the age students can leave school to 17 or 18. As far as I’m concerned it’s simply one more door into the school-to-prison pipeline – expanding the likelihood that a teen is going to be arrested for a status offense.

So I always have a flare up of frustration as I read about another state thinking they are doing the right thing when they raise the legal age to drop-out of school. Kentucky is the latest. (See the July 10^th article in the Lexington Herald Leader All Kentucky Schools Must Increase Dropout Age to 18 by 2017)

Here’s my logic:  If students do not feel school is meaningful and that the adults in the school don’t care enough to help them graduate, they are going to either drop out in frustration or get on with their lives. Teens do take more risks... and but they are also rational beings. The decision to drop out when they only have 50% of their credits and the school isn’t offering a path to graduation is both – rational and risky.   

There is another type of student that doesn’t get a diploma, and they may actually be a good student before life gets in the way.  It’s the Fiona Gallagher phenomena. For those of you that haven’t watched Shameless, she’s a responsible young woman who finds herself as the primary caregiver for her siblings...and drops out of school.  The rigidity of our education system means that students have to pick between school and responsibility. Raising the drop out age isn’t going to do anything for these students – in fact it will most likely complicate things. For example, they might be dragged in for truancy, often right into the court system, when they don’t show up for school.

Project Turnaround in Philly found that 1/3 of the students that disengaged from school couldn’t be predicted. The students were doing fine and then dropped out in 11^th or 12^th grade.  We really don’t know enough about what happened to those students or what could be happening for students like them,  as our effort, understandably, has been focused on those we can predict.  From conversations with practitioners, it seems the likely cause is usually absent or ailing parents, a need to put food on the table, a life-altering encounter with the police, or previous trauma catching up with them in the form of depression, substance abuse, or “acting out” as they enter older adolescence.

The way to resolve this is for states to establish policy and investments that create flexible schools, really deep relationships, and multiple pathways to graduation. It’s about creating flexible policies that allow students to leave school without dropping out. In a previous post, I highlighted some of the ideas from Leaving to Learn. Perhaps we also need to think about Leaving to Earn and Leaving to Care –  policies that offer students the opportunity to ask for a leave of absence when responsibilities start to pile up. This would be an opportunity to assign an incredible skilled counselor or youth development practitioner to stay in touch with them during this time to help them problem-solve, start to go to school part-time, and take advantage of online skill-building and courses. With the introduction of competency-based education, they may be able to convert their experiences into demonstration of skills and competencies.

At a minimum, if states are going to increase the age students need to stay in school they should also make sure that students have full access to education until they get their diploma, eliminating the "black hole" of education which swallows up so many young people. If state policymakers really want to increase graduation rates they need to think about policies that promote “stickiness” so that students can always come back when their life stabilizes a bit. It’s about lifting up the age that students can complete their diploma, and continuing to draw on K-12 funding, which is much more generous than any of the other funding sources for education for older adolescents and young adults. It’s about making sure that there are enough “alternative schools” that emphasize relationships and engagement and are small enough to create individualized plans for every Fiona out there.

It would be great to invest in some research to better understand what is happening with the Fionas of the world. Better yet, let’s just put into place the policies that  allow us to develop enduring relationships with them during difficult times. Then they can just tell us about what is happening themselves rather than having to hire researchers to try to track them down.