HB 1202, "An Act Relative to Public School Attendance Requirements" - see HB 4738
HB 1202, "An Act Relative to Public School Attendance Requirements," was filed by Rep. Antonio F. D. Cabral (Democrat - 13th Bristol). This bill, if enacted, would raise the compulsory attendance age from 16 to 17, or 10th grade. AHEM has contacted Rep. Cabral's office for clarification of this bill. We have been told that the bill would require school attendance until age 17 AND completion of the tenth grade. For school students, this would mean that they would have to remain in school until age 17. If a student did not complete the 10th grade by age 17, he or she would be required to remain in school until he or she completed 10th grade, even if the student were older than 17. For homeschoolers, the bill would require reporting to local school districts until the age of 17, instead of age 16, as is currently required.

The bill was referred to the Joint Committee on Education on January 26, 2005. A public hearing was held at the State House on September 22, 2005. At the request of the sponsor, a second public hearing was held in the New Bedford area on January 23, 2006. This was done to give the people in the sponsor's district the chance to be heard without having to travel to the State House. We have been told that this bill is "very much alive."

This bill, if passed, would be ineffective in reducing the dropout rate, and would result in increased spending for school departments. Data aggregated from a three year period to calculate high school completion rates on a state-by-state basis (Dropout Rates in the United States: 2000, p. 22; National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, Doc. No. NCES 2002-114) merged with information about the age of compulsory attendance in each state shows that states requiring compulsory attendance until age sixteen have a higher average rate of school completion than those states requiring compulsory attendance until age seventeen or eighteen.

At this time, we recommend that anyone with concerns about the bill call or write members of the Joint committee on Education and voice those concerns. We recommend that one write in opposition to the bill as a concerned taxpayer, not as a homeschooler. Opposition by a relatively small number of people who base their opposition to the bill on the fact that they will be inconvenienced by having to file paperwork with their school departments will not be an effective argument if the bill sponsor believes that a greater number of people, i.e. high school students, can benefit from the bill. On the other hand, concern about the cost to taxpayers with little in the way of results is a very powerful argument.
• The text of the bill can be found at http://www.mass.gov/legis/bills/house/ht01/ht01202.htm.
• Contact information for members of the Joint committee on Education can be found at http://www.ahem.info/CommitteeonEducationArtsHumanities.htm.
• See "Comparison of high school completion rates based on compulsory school age" at http://www.ahem.info/HighSchoolCompletionRatesbyState.pdf.

Back to Current News.

The information on this website does not constitute legal advice; it is provided for informational purposes only.