More on Obama's SOTU Proposal on High-School Drop-Outs
I love Twitter! After I published my Nation column on the education proposals in the State of the Union, friend and Obama admin alum Josh Bendor got in touch to alert me to some interesting research on the positive effects of forcing kids to stay in school until age 18. Some of this work was done by Alan Kreuger of Princeton, who is now the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors. Another paper, by Philip Oreopoulos, found that "dropping out one year later increases present value income by more than 10 times forgone earnings and more than 2 times the maximum lifetime annual wage."
I still think that alongside any discussion of raising the age of compulsory schooling, we must talk about how
