High school teachers, help me out here.

[mbperrin]

14. In Texas, you cannot drop out until age 18, and to have a driver's license

before 18, you must be enrolled and passing.

In Texas, the voting age, lottery ticket purchase, tobacco purchase, marriage without parent consent are all 18. There seems to be a feeling at the lawmaker level that they're ready to do anything except drink at that age (I disagree).

At the high school where I teach, we have about 150 overage students out of 3000 students - Texas allows attendance at school until the age of 22. I have had sections of these in the past, but attendance is terrible, and someone finally explained to me that these were our drug dealers, who needed to be on campus to be close to their market.

So I do think that an alternative setting is required for older students - voc education would also be good - we had it before NCLB, and our completion rate was better then than now.

Here, there seems to be a feeling of they're "finished" at 18. You know and I know that critical thinking isn't attained until age 25 by a large segment of the population, so that can't be true. When you look at the cost of what we do now - crime, poverty, despair - it does seem we could spend some money to change that.

But talking sense to a Texas politician is like talking with a stump - you'll get tired before they do, and they cannot be moved.