NIXON PLAN WOULD TAKE DRIVER'S LICENSE FROM DROPOUTS

Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon is pushing legislation to drive potential dropouts to stay in school.

Nixon wants the state to bar high-school dropouts from receiving a driver's license until age 18 and revoke the driver's license of any high-school student under the age of 18 who drops out or is expelled.

"I don't see this as a punishment thing," Nixon told reporters at a Thursday afternoon news conference at the attorney general's Cape Girardeau office.

Asked later about the proposal, two Cape Girardeau School District officials said such a law probably wouldn't deter students from dropping out. The reactions came from Superintendent Dan Tallent and Sheldon Tyler, director of the Alternative Education Center, which deals with dropouts.

Most of the some 40 students at the Alternative Education Center dropped out of high school.

Tyler said students won't stay in school just to have a driver's license and they will get behind the wheel even without a license.

Tyler said the law would be as difficult to enforce as Missouri's seat-belt law.

Nixon said the measure and nine other "common-sense" changes to Missouri law would help fight crime.

Some of the other proposals would allow victims who testify in trials to remain in the courtroom throughout the proceedings, extend the statute of limitations for crimes of sexual abuse and make it harder for criminals to hide behind an insanity defense.

Nixon said he favors putting a five-year sunset clause on the legislation dealing with dropouts. If the measure doesn't work, it could be scrapped, he said.

Nixon said high-school dropouts often commit crimes. More than 21,000 people currently are in state prisons, an increase of more than 7,000 in four years, he said. "That population continues to be younger and younger and younger," Nixon said.

"For some reason, staying in school is not a popular thing to do," he said.

Statewide, 27 percent of Missouri students who enter ninth grade never finish high school. In St. Louis more than 60 percent drop out, and in Kansas City 40 percent don't finish high school.

"That's outrageous," Nixon said.

The attorney general said government is no substitute for parents. But he said society increasingly faces a "violent, uneducated, godless, fatherless group of kids."

Each year 10 to 12 percent of the high-school class in the Cape Girardeau School District, or about 100 to 120 students, drop out. "Our rate is way too high," said Tallent, the superintendent.

When a student turns 16, he or she legally can leave school. Some students drop out, return to school and drop out again in a single school year, the superintendent said.

Tallent said Nixon's proposal would punish dropouts but wouldn't teach students the value of an education.

As part of its master plan, the school district wants to tie after-school jobs to good attendance, grades and behavior. Tallent said school officials hope to develop a common application form that students would have to fill out when they apply for part-time jobs.

Students would have to secure the recommendations of their principal and teachers before businesses would hire them, school officials have suggested. Such a policy would provide an incentive for students to study hard and stay in school, Tallent said.