by Hannah Sparling

Seventeen-year-old Faith Rowland sums up her thoughts on Kentucky's new dropout law in two words:

It's stupid.

Forgive Rowland if she's brusque; she has a lot on her mind. The Boone County teen is trying to earn her GED, but she's teetering on an educational cliff: Either she passes all GED sections by Tuesday, or, by law, she has to re-enroll in school until she turns 18.

For Rowland, that will mean four months of, really, nothing. She'll go to school, but she has no intention of trying to graduate. She'll wait until her birthday, drop out again, and head right back to the GED center.

"It's really just a waste of time for me," she said during a break from a recent GED class. "I'm already here, and I'm so close to getting my GED. ... Honestly, I think it's stupid. The whole law."

Kentucky legislators broke with more than 80 years of tradition in Spring 2013, raising the state's compulsory attendance age from 16 to 18. It was voluntary at first, but once 55 percent of districts signed on, it became mandatory for all.

As of January, all 173 public districts have adopted the policy. For most, it took effect this school year, though Newport Independent Schools is waiting until the 2016-17 school year, and six other districts are waiting until the year after that.

The goal is simple, said Tom Edgett, with the Kentucky Department of Education: More students with diplomas, fewer students dropping out. The question is, though, will it work? And what might be the unintended consequences?

"Time will tell more than anything," Edgett said. "We're hoping that numbers are going to change drastically over the next few years."

It sounds like a job for a bounty hunter.

Students dropped out of school, back when it was legal for a 16-year-old to do so, and now, each district's director of pupil personnel, or DPP, is tasked with tracking them down and bringing them back. The student might have moved out-of-district or even out-of-state, but DPPs still must make "every effort" to find each dropout, said Newport Independent Schools DPP Mike Wills.

"Every DPP in the state is tearing their hair out about that," Wills said. "That's just going to add more work to me and my counterparts."

But here's the catch: Wills can find students and tell them they're breaking the law. He can tell them they're required to go back to school. But, he can't really make them. Aside from filing charges and taking a student or his parents to court, there's not much recourse for districts.

Newport's dropout rate fell from 6.6 percent in the 2009-10 school year to 2.4 percent in 2013-14, the latest data available. The district was labeled a "dropout factory" in 2010, Wills said, but now it's down to just one or two a year.

"And how do you that? By actively engaging children and families," he said. "By actively counseling, by actively developing individual learning plans with students, and by making them feel that they can succeed."

As part of the new law, each district got a $10,000 implementation grant, and Newport spent its money on alternative classrooms, spaces designed for struggling students to keep them from dropping out in the first place. That's where the focus should be, Wills said – prevention rather than following up after the fact.

Dakota Swanson is confident he'll get his GED by the 30th. Well, honestly, he's a little nervous. But he's 80 percent sure he'll pass.

"It's stressful," he said. "It's a test. ... I know I'm going to have trouble with the math. Maybe the science. But the reading and social studies, I'm pretty confident I'll pass."

Swanson is 17, a defector from Kenton County Schools. He always hated public school, he said, so he tried online classes and then ended up at the GED center. If he doesn't get his GED by Tuesday, he'll go back to online school, he said. But he makes air quotes when he says that, because while he's still technically enrolled in an online program, he's not going to actually try to graduate. He'll probably get a job, he said, and once he's 18, he'll go back and get his GED, with the ultimate goal of enrolling in a welding program.

"It's really not that hard to just drop out," he said. "As long as you're registered and your mom or dad is the 'teacher,' you don't really have to do it. ... We're smart kids; we can know what to do."

Rowland was 16 when she left school. Her GPA had slipped to about a 2.0, and she was a junior taking sophomore-level classes. She was dealing with a lot of family issues, she said, and the upshot was she wasn't sleeping much. There were nights she didn't sleep at all, she said, and she'd be too exhausted to go to school.

She, too, tried online school before finding her niche at the GED center. She's fairly confident she can pass the tests before time runs out, but she knows the law is going to affect many others like her. And, she thinks it will have a negative impact on schools, because they'll be forced to take a lot of reluctant students.

"They're wasting their time, and they're wasting the kids' time," Rowland said. "I understand they're trying to better education, but they don't understand how this affects everyone."

It's difficult to argue 16-year-olds should be dropping out of school. That they're mature enough to know what's best. That they won't regret it later. But in the past, when DPP Wills, from Newport, tracked down a "habitual truant," he had the option of taking the reluctant student to court, where a judge could order him or her to get a GED in a state-accredited program.

When a judge orders a GED, the completion rate is about 85 percent, Wills said.

Now, the only option is to come back to school. But in reality, a 17-year-old who's dragged back to school with few credits to his name has little chance of success, Wills said. In his mind, a high school diploma is No. 1 – nothing beats it. But if that's not feasible, a GED is far preferable to nothing.

"We both know that some kids get so far behind, there is no way they can catch up by 18. So what are you going to do with these children?" Wills said. There's a "slight stigma" to a GED versus a diploma, "but the fact of the matter is, it still is a passport for young men and women."

Boone County Adult Education Director Martha Karlage estimates her office is working with five or 10 students caught between 16 and 18. It's not a huge number, but for those five or 10, it's a huge deal, she said.

The bill was passed in 2013, so, for "informed people," Karlage's hope is they've been preparing all along and won't be caught off guard.

Sen. David Givens, R-Greensburg, the bill's main sponsor, could not be reached for comment. But Rep. Derrick Graham, D-Frankfort, chair of the House education committee, said he doesn't remember there ever being discussion of a grandfather clause when the bill was passed.

Graham is hearing now that the transition might be rough, particularly at GED sites, but frankly, it's probably too late to fix that now. The law takes effect on Wednesday, "and we won't be in session until January," Graham said. "So how that's going to be addressed is going to be difficult."

KDE has a section on its website that explains the new attendance law. It also makes it clear that enforcement is up to DPPs and not KDE. In fact, the DPP is one of few jobs where the duties – one of which is to enforce attendance – are written into state law.

How to enforce those laws? Well, that's a little less clear.

Boone County DPP Mike Ford has a three-pronged strategy: getting the word out through media, through internal communication, then, finally, through personalized letters to dropouts. But Ford isn't really worried about finding dropouts. To him, the bigger challenge is taking care of them once they return. He doesn't have a specific number, but he estimates Boone County Schools will have to track down somewhere between 200 and 300 students.

"Sometimes, we need to look at kids and families and say, 'You can't quit,' " Ford said. "But we have to in turn look at that family and say, 'But we're not going to quit on you.' "

Students drop out for a variety of reasons – boredom, bullying, illness, pregnancy – but the No. 1 cause is a student feels too far behind to catch up, Ford said. So, it's up to schools to figure out how to change that.

Ford gets emotional talking about the change. It's historic for Kentucky, he said, and he's proud to be part of it.

"I've had people look at me and say, 'What do you want us to do with him, or what do you want us to do with her?' Hey folks, we can't ask that question anymore," he said. "We can't play Pontius Pilate on this. We can't wash our hands of these kids."

Kentucky raised its dropout age from 16 to 18, hoping to cut back on the number of students giving up on school. For most, the law takes effect July 1, though several districts are putting off implementation a year or two.