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Hold the diploma for eighth- grade grads

Governor wants to raise Arizona’s drop-out age

Governor Janet Napolitano and members of a Latino advocacy group believe the Arizona "education pipeline" is clogged and needs a rooting out.

The elementary and high school systems are crusty, resistant to change, and outdated, they say.

The governor wants to raise Arizona’s drop-out age from 16 to 18. As chair of the National Governors Association, she has the platform to include this proposal in her push for a national, innovative plan to retool America’s classrooms.

Members of the Phoenix-based Arizona Latino Research Enterprise (ALRE) are proposing a bolder, more cultural approach. They’ve created an "action plan" to outlaw state schools from giving eighth-grade certificates and showy graduation parties. They hope to piggyback on the governor’s initiative to spread ALRE’s proposal to other states with high Latino drop-out rates.

Both point out the damage from a broken system is obvious: Studies show Arizona with the lowest percentage of young adults between 18 and 24 with a high school diploma, and a quarter of all students not graduating. Latinos and other ethnic groups are the hardest hit by the school drop-out rate and its social and economic fall-out.

David Garcia, an assistant professor at the ASU Mary Lou Fulton College of Education, says that many Latino students see the certificates as diplomas, and that the eighth-grade grad parties organized by schools and parents send the wrong message.

"If the goal is to graduate from high school, we find it confusing to give students an interim diploma," Garcia says. An ALRE member, he’ll moderate a panel at an ALRE Town Hall Sept. 29-30 that will include Panfilo Contreras, head of the Arizona School Board Association, and other prominent education leaders to talk about erasing the state statute that authorizes schools to issue eighth-grade certifications.

He adds this proposal might help recent immigrant parents and their children understand the eighth-grade isn’t the top of the U.S. educational ladder. In Mexico, compulsory education ends at about the eighth grade.

"In no way should we give students the idea that they are done," Garcia says. "The most important milestone for the Latino community should be high school graduation."

Jeanine L’Ecuyer, spokesperson for Gov. Napolitano, says that ALRE’s proposal is intriguing, and a topic the governor should look into. She says a study from the governor’s office shows that only 1.6 percent of the jobs in a New Economy are available to young people with only high school diplomas.

"We are entering a job market that requires highly skilled workers," she says. "Post secondary education is a necessity."