During President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, he dropped in a proposal that students should not be permitted to leave high school until they either turn 18 or get a high school diploma.

Dana Goldstein, an highly-regarded education reporter, writes in Slate that while Pres. Obama’s proposal was puzzling – he has no power to enforce such a change because that’s a states’ rights thing – his suggestion could “act as an agenda-setter.” There’s much research out there that sticking it out through 12th grade can double a worker’s maximum annual wage, but currently 30 states allow children to drop out at earlier. In NJ, it’s age 16.

According to The Record, a piece of legislation that would move the drop-out age to 18 (sponsored by Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson Coleman) has been stalled in the Statehouse for years. NJ’s graduation rates vary wildly. In high-performing suburban districts it often approaches 100%. In poor urban areas it’s far lower. For example, Camden High reported a 2010 graduation rate of 42.1%. It’s widely recognized that self-reported school graduation rates are inflated and a new process installed this year will result in lower rates.

From The Record:

In 2010, the state reported a 95 percent graduation rate and 9,283 dropouts, but officials acknowledged there might have been thousands more. Students who stopped showing up were often claimed as transfers, for example, when they had actually quit school.

The available data on graduation rates is notoriously inaccurate, and the state promises to release more precise data within months.