well?

While I still have the legal right to make his ass go? No.

I dropped out of public school.

I felt they didn't have anything else to offer me, so I got my GED, got a job, and moved out.  Fast forward nine years and I'm doing far better than my friends who graduated high school and went to college.  

If the kid has a realistic attitude and gets a job, I'd certainly let him drop out.

If he's just lazy and won't be able to enter the adult working world, then you should make him stay in until he figures out that he's going to have to do something eventually.

Not until he was 18 and not living at my home any longer.  His ass would be at school every day, if I had to drive his idiot ass there and sit next to him in class for a week to get my point across.  

We let ours "drop out" so we could homeschool them.  Public school sucked.

too general of a question...

what are the alternatives?  GED and a job?  homeschooling?  private school?

Quoted: too general of a question... what are the alternatives?  GED and a job?  homeschooling?  private school?

that is for you to decide

There is an exception to every rule, but my kid would be in school for sure.

It would depend...if he got a very high ACT score prior to dropping out so he could get to a good college without a HS diploma, then sure.  As long as I knew he was getting a GED and either going to college or joining the military.

-Ben

It depends.  A friend of mine had a very ambitious son who dropped out of public school - home schooled himself and entered into College a year early.

Let's see. We got prosecuted -- that's "prosecuted" as in "had to hire an attorney, go to court", etc. -- by the local school authorities because our daughter was supposedly truant on September 1 (a week before school started), and on Thanksgiving and the following Friday.

It took about half a dozen court appearances to get anyone to take a look at the dates and compare them with the school calendar. They would simply explain "We aren't at that stage of the proceedings yet."

The school staff were some of the stupidest people I ever met. One of my daughters had to repeat an entire Spanish class because the teacher was mentally ill and just babbled throughout the entire class.

That's the extremely short version of the story.

So I took every one of my kids out of the regular schools. Their academic performance more than doubled after I put them into an independent study program for students who were working in the movies.

Only to home school.

Yeah, I wish I had dropped out, gotten my GED, and gone on to college instead of wasting my time in high school putting up with the endless bullshit and learning nothing.

Quoted: Quoted: too general of a question... what are the alternatives?  GED and a job?  homeschooling?  private school? that is for you to decide

OK, well, here we go, and I can only answer this from the perspective of a mother of 2 gifted children, so bear with me:

GED and a job?  Over my dead body.  It works for some, but mine are too gifted academically to not get the "pieces of paper" that make daily life so much easier.

Homeschooling?  Maybe...  They'd have to present their plan to me as to school hours, as both adults in the house work full-time.

Private school?  Yeah...  Good luck with that.  Admission wouoldn't be a problem, but financing would be.  Did I mention we both work full time?  

Generally, a HS diploma is worth $250k over dropping out.  An AA degree is worth an additional $250K.  A college degree is worth about a cool million more than dropping out.

This is pretty well born out by research and based on a work life of 40-45 years.

Your mileage may vary.  

A GED is generally seen as proof of the inability to stick with a problem over the long haul.  A GED without additional training, certification, education, is considered less than a HS diploma.

In the school where I am the SRO, I have found that it really is the lowest scum of society who drop out/let their kids drop out of school.  The types who have no concept of having to go to school to get a job because they have been on welfare their whole lives and know the gubmint will take care of them - why should they get up early every day and do homework and stuff.  

OTOH, I work in an urban type school with a population that is rather lacking in things like morals, work ethic, and integrity.  

As long as the kid has a reasonable plan to do SOMETHING after he drops out of school besides sell crack, I wouldn't condemn him or his parents.  Problem is, I just haven't seen that yet.  

If, like some here say, the kid is going to do something - like get a GED and get into college early, etc - I would actually encourage it.  No good reason to allow yourself to be held back from your potential by school.  Leaving school because it's a LAST resort to support your family, care for a sick relative, etc. is a different story entirely.  

Personally, I would NOT allow my kid to drop out, but I don't plan on sending him to public school anyhow.  He or She WILL complete at least high school, or have a REAL good plan otherwise.


-K