Undereducated Parenting in Memphis and Shelby County

Dear Friends,

We would like to share with you a recent policy brief produced by the Center for Urban Child Policy at The Urban Child Institute. This brief discusses undereducated parenting in our community and includes suggestions for policymakers to help provide more secure beginnings for vulnerable children in Memphis and Shelby County.

Among the key findings:

- In Shelby County, 28% of children are born to mothers lacking a high school diploma- and 13% are born into households where neither parent has a high school diploma. Only about one in five (21%) of Shelby County children are born to mothers with a college degree.

- Ninety percent of Shelby County families headed by a person lacking a high school diploma reside inside the Memphis city limits.

- In Shelby County, most families in poverty do not have educational attainment beyond high school; furthermore, almost 60% of our unemployed population has no formal education beyond the 12th grade.

- Parental educational attainment is a good predictor of a child’s overall life outcomes and successes. Increased parental education leads to improved child health and increases in educational performance and expectations.

Educational opportunities can be more accessible to low-income families in Memphis and Shelby County.

Policy Suggestions:

1. Increase funding for education and training in vocational and occupational skills and certification programs for low-income parents.

2. Increase access to financial aid and childcare for low-income students.

3. Head Start can promote the pursuit of higher education among the next generation of parents (Source: National Center for Children in Poverty).

The Center for Urban Child Policy conducts policy analysis and outreach as part of The Urban Child Institute in Memphis, Tennessee. The Center is committed to building public will and a sustained political voice for children in order to improve the well-being of all children and families.

We welcome your questions and comments.

Sincerely,
Doug Imig, Ph.D.
Frances Breland, M.A.
Katie Devlin, M.S.

Homelessness: A Family Affair

The Washington Post is reporting today on the changing face of homelessness in America- a rise in the number of two-parent families seeking housing. The current foreclosure dilemma, sluggish economy and rising unemployment rates are resulting in a marked increase in homeless families throughout the nation.

“Experts who study homelessness and poverty said the increase in homeless families illustrates how severely the economic crisis is affecting middle- and working-class households and how the worsening economy is pushing more people toward poverty,” says The Washington Post.

Local authorities in Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, Portland, Seattle and Washington are reporting rising numbers of families seeking housing help, with the primary reasons reported for homelessness being job losses and foreclosures (Koch, 2008).

What does this mean for our community? Memphis employment has contracted more sharply than the national average throughout 2008. Employment growth in the Memphis MSA was negative in all good-producing and in most service-providing sectors (July 2007-July 2008) (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2008). According to a January 2009 article published in the Commercial Appeal, the Memphis foreclosure rate ranks 18th worst in the United States. Our most conservative estimates of projected recession-induced homelessness for Memphis and Shelby County suggest that our homeless population will increase by 1,090 people; however, estimates based on population statistics from the Memphis/Shelby County Mayor’s Task Force on Homelessness suggest that our homeless population could increase by over 4,000+ during the economic downturn (CUCP, 2009).

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development offers five promising homelessness prevention strategies:
1. Provide housing subsidies to low-income families.
2. Link supportive services (i.e. mental health counseling) and permanent housing.
3. Provide effective mediation in housing courts.
4. Provide cash assistance for rent or mortgage deficits.
5. Ensure that families quickly leave transitional shelters and stay housed afterwards.

The full HUD report can be found at http://www.huduser.org/Publications/pdf/Strategies_for_preventing_Homelessness.pdf

References:

Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis. (2008). Current economic conditions in the eighth federal
reserve district: Memphis zone. Retrieved February 12, 2009 from
http://research.stlouisfed.org/regecon/burgundybooks/08/12/ZBB_Mem1208.pdf

Fontenay, B. (2009, January 16). Memphis foreclosure rate ranks 18th worst in the nation.
The Commercial Appeal.
Retrieved February 16, 2009 from
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/jan/16/memphis-foreclosures-rank-high/

Jenkins, C.L. (2009, February 16). Homelessness: A family portrait. The Washington Post, pp.
A01.

Koch, W. (2008, October 21). Homeless numbers 'alarming'. USA Today. Retrieved
February 16, 2009 from
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-10-21-%20homeless_N.htm

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Policy Development and
Research. (2005). Strategies for preventing homelessness. Washington, DC: The Urban
Institute, Walter R. McDonald & Associates, Inc.

The 2002 report from the Memphis and Shelby County Mayors' Task Force on Homelessness can be accessed at http://www.ich.gov/slocal/plans/memphis.pdf

Ed Ziegler Discusses a New Pre-K - 3rd Initiative

In a new essay, Dr. Edward Ziegler, one of the founders of the Head Start program, argues for a rethinking of federal Title I policy. Ziegler believes we have a pressing need to redesign Title I based on scientific evidence that was not available when the program was created in 1965. Summarizing this literature, Ziegler argues that a key guide to effective programming is "the younger the better."

Key points drawn from the essay:

To its credit, Title I has never been tied to the "inoculation" model that pervaded the social sciences at the time it was launched. Everyone wanted to believe that one or two years of preschool could serve as an inoculation against all the ravages of poverty that a child may experience long before starting and long after leaving a preschool intervention ... We must move to a more realistic "developmental" model, in which the child is seen as moving from state to state in life, with each stage requiring appropriate environmental nutrients.

Baby Einstein?

By age two, ninety percent of children are viewing television programming for an average of more than an hour and a half each day (Zimmerman, Christakis, & Meltzoff, 2007).

Children’s early brain development occurs through a process of interactions between children and their environments. Unfortunately, when infants and toddlers are watching television, their brains are being wired to respond to screens at a time when they need to be interacting with real human beings and developing motor skills.

The infant media market is an extremely lucrative industry; furthermore, many parents are convinced that program viewing is good for baby brain development. However, Andrew Meltzoff, co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington, suggests that early television viewing places children on a route that puts them at an increased risk for attention deficit problems, diminished reading ability and weight issues.

Guidelines for Parents, Educators, and Early Childhood Professionals
- Discourage television viewing for children younger than 24 months; instead, suggest activities that foster healthy development (like reading, playing and singing).

Older toddlers:
- Remove television sets from children’s bedrooms.

- Monitor the programs children are viewing. Television programming should be informative and peaceful.

- Encourage brain activity by showing children that watching television can be an active experience. Repeat words and phrases you hear during the show and encourage children to sing and dance along with the characters.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that families and professionals lead community efforts in order to raise awareness about the relationship between early development and media exposure.

- Coordinate events advancing media education, such as local television turnoff week projects.

- Create alliances including libraries, churches, and community outreach programs to expand media education beyond the school systems.

- Work with the Department of Education to encourage the development of media education curricula for young children.

References:
Bar-on, M.E. et. al. (2001). Children, adolescents and television. Pediatrics, 107, 423-426.

Meltz, B.F. (2007, May 27). Heavy tv viewing under 2 is found: Ignoring risks, parents cite 'educational' value. The Boston Glode, pp.1.

Zimmerman, F., Christakis, D.A., & Meltzoff, A. (2007). Television and dvd/video viewing in children younger than 2 years. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 161 (5), 473-479.

Teen Parenting: Impacting Children and Families in Memphis and Shelby County

Dear Friends,

We would like to share with you a recent policy brief produced by the Center for Urban Child Policy at The Urban Child Institute. This brief discusses teen parenting in our community and includes suggestions for parents and policymakers to help provide more secure beginnings for vulnerable children in Memphis and Shelby County.

Among the key findings:

- 1 in 6 children in Shelby County are born to teen mothers. More than 85% of these mothers raise their children on less than $15,000 a year.

- 1 in 4 teen births in our county were not first births and the majority are to unmarried mothers without a high school diploma.

- In Shelby County, teen mothers are less likely than older mothers to receive prenatal care and more likely to give birth to a low birth-weight infant.

- Children born to teen mothers are at a greater risk for social, educational and behavioral problems throughout their lifetimes.

There are many things parents can do to help prevent their children from becoming parents at a young age:

Work to develop a close relationship with your children. Express love and affection often. Be supportive. Have meals together as a family. Listen carefully to what your children say. Be respectful to your children.

Know your children’s friends and their families. Welcome your child’s peer group into your home. Make an effort to meet the parents of your child’s friends. Talk openly to your child’s friends about your expectations.

Let your child know that you value his or her education highly. Set high expectations for educational performance. Help with homework. Meet with instructors and administrators. Volunteer in your child’s classroom.

Supervise and monitor your children. Establish regulations and curfews. Set high standards for expected behavior. Know what your children are listening to, watching and reading.

The Center for Urban Child Policy conducts public policy analysis and outreach as part of The Urban Child Institute in Memphis, Tennessee. The Center is committed to building public will and a sustained political voice for children in order to improve the well-being of all children and their families.

We welcome your questions and comments.

Sincerely,

Doug Imig, Ph.D.

Frances Breland, M.A.

Katie Devlin, M.S.

Kids Having Kids

The non-partisan Urban Institute today announced the release of the second edition of Kids Having Kids: Economic Costs and Social Consequences of Teen Pregnancy.

Sections of their release follow:

Teen pregnancy and birth rates in the United States are the industrialized world’s highest. Each year, 7.5 percent of all 15- to 19-year-old women become pregnant, resulting in 442,000 births among teenagers in 2006.

The second edition of Kids Having Kids: Economic Costs and Social Consequences of Teen Pregnancy from the Urban Institute Press examines the context and impact of teen parenthood and finds no simple relationship between a person’s early parenthood and her or her family’s subsequent health, wealth, or education. Instead, the volume’s 21 contributors find, many personal and economic factors combine to influence the life of a teen parent and her family.

Economists V. Joseph Hotz, Susan Williams McElroy, and Seth G. Sanders in one chapter acknowledge that women who have babies during their teens tend to have lower levels of education, employment, and earnings, to depend more on public assistance, and to spend more time as single parents. “It is no wonder that teenage childbearing is perceived as a trap door that propels young mothers downwards socioeconomically,” they write. That said, they find that teens who have their first child before age 18 do not work less, earn less, or receive less spousal income and are not more dependent on public assistance than similar young women who delay childbearing.

Yet, in a companion analysis of newer data, Saul D. Hoffman describes worse circumstances for recent groups of early parents and finds that a teen birth reduces the likelihood a young woman will continue her education beyond high school. Additionally, a teen mother’s earnings and spousal income both are lower than if the young woman had delayed a first birth, according to Hoffman.

Children of teen mothers score lower than children of older parents in assessments of health, cognitive ability, and behavior, report contributors Jennifer S. Manlove, Elizabeth Terry-Humen, Lisa A. Mincieli, and Kristin A. Moore. Much of the difference disappears, however, when researchers control for such background factors as a teen’s education, her mother’s education, and whether she grew up with both parents. Some negative effects consistently trump background. Babies of teen mothers are more likely to have a low birth weight, and daughters of 18- to 19-year-old mothers have lower odds of completing high school.

Manlove, Terry-Humen, Mincieli, and Moore write, “When social, economic, and demographic factors are controlled, many findings diminish or go away, which suggest that improving a mother’s educational and social circumstances would contribute to better outcomes for children. In other words, delaying the first birth is part of the story but not the whole story.”

The book’s analysis of the economic costs of teen parenthood is equally multifaceted. Editors Saul D. Hoffman and Rebecca A. Maynard report that women who become parents before age 18 have about $1,600 more in net annual income from all sources, including public assistance, than would be expected if they delay childbearing until age 20 or 21. Women who become parents at 18 or 19 have average net incomes about $300 higher than expected if they delay childbearing. Teenage motherhood costs taxpayers about $7.3 billion annually in social-program costs, including foster care and incarceration, as well as diminished taxes from lower-earning and lower-spending teenage parents and their children.

Kids Having Kids also measures teen parenthood’s effect on child abuse and neglect and on the likelihood that the child of a teen mother will grow up to commit crime, truncate his or her education, or become a teen parent.

Kids Having Kids is a volume of comprehensive research and analytical rigor. Hoffman, Maynard, and their colleagues disentangle the many complicated social issues surrounding and affecting teen parenthood, allowing policymakers and advocates to develop the right responses for the right problems.

Kids Having Kids: Costs and Social Consequences of Teen Pregnancy, edited by Saul D. Hoffman and Rebecca A. Maynard, is available from the Urban Institute Press (ISBN 0-87766-745-2, $34.50.).

Read more, including the introductory chapter, at https://ummail.memphis.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=3d8e9c2fe63b44f6b540b11828797082&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.urban.org%2fbooks%2fkidshavingkids.

Translating America's Shared Concern with Children into Political Action

In a recent guest column in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, Center for Urban Policy director Doug Imig argued that the upcoming national elections offer a critical opportunity for voters to rally behind our shared concern with children's well-being. The future we ask policy makers to ensure for all children is one where kids arrive at the schoolhouse doors happy and healthy and ready to learn, where families are passionate about public schools, where students both excel academically and volunteer in their communities, and where teens graduate and avoid risky behaviors like becoming parents long before they are ready to shoulder adult responsibilities.

The science behind these findings is strong and persuasive, and the basic idea just makes intuitive sense: When we invest up front to set kids on the right path today, we are investing in the future health and strength of all own families and communities. It's time for us to realize that our concerns with children are shared, and that making smart choices now will improve their condition. It's time to demand that our candidates tell us what they will do to move the country in the direction we would choose for all our children.

To access the column, please visit:
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/oct/15/guest-column-campaigns-should-think-about/

Stable Family Formation and Child Well Being in Memphis

Across the U.S., the average age at first birth has held steadily over the last several decades. At the same time, the age at first marriage has gone up. This trend in family formation patterns has lead to an increase in family instability which has significantly decreased child well-being. There are only two permanent solutions to this form of family instability. As a society we can encourage marriage at younger ages or we can encourage delayed childbirth and parenting (Sawhill 2002).

Multiple factors influence whether a person decides to become a single parent at an early age or chooses to delay parenting until after they are stably married and have completed their education (McLanahan 1994, Sum et al. forthcoming, Marini 1984, Western 2004, Edin and Reed 2005).

I. Challenges Facing Never Married Parent Families

Never-married and separated parents often have educations that stopped with high school, and struggle to support their families on low incomes. This profile accounts for roughly 32% of families with children in Memphis and Shelby County. These families are most often headed by mothers. These children and families seldom often have little interaction with absent fathers and are likely to experience high levels of family, residential, and school transience and instability.

· Nearly half of all African American families raising children (45% of all black families with children and 50% of African American children) in Shelby County today have never-married or separated parents.
· Families raised by never-married and separated parents in Shelby County have an average income of $21,602 (or 122% of the poverty line for a family of three). Among both Black and White families raising children, parents who are separated have less income than never married families raising children.

Children born to single-parents are 5 times more likely to live in poverty, and consequently are less likely to have access to nutritious diets, regular health care, high quality center-based preschool, are less likely to be read to frequently, and – as a result – are likely to reach school well behind their peers raised in middle-class, married-couple families.

II. What Factors contribute to the Rise in Never Married Parenting?

High School Drop-Out Rates
The likelihood that a family will be raised by a never-married mother is significantly related to the mother’s overall level of education. Economist Andrew Sum notes that 70% of mothers without a high school diploma will never be married vs. 10 to 15% of mothers who have master’s degrees (Sum et al., forthcoming).

Decline in Real Wages
“Between 1980 and 1990, women with a high school degree experienced a 2 percent decline in earnings, while men with similar education experienced a 13 percent decline. This absolute loss in earnings particularly discouraged marriage by some low-skilled men who were no longer able to fulfill their breadwinner role” (McLanahan 1994).

Teen Pregnancy
Daniel Lichter of Ohio State University has found that women who have given birth out of wedlock are 40% less likely than women of comparable race, economic background and education to eventually marry. The rate increases to 51% when we exclude women who subsequently married the father of their first child (Sawhill 2002).

Rising Incarceration Rates
Men who are incarcerated are much less likely to get married than their counterparts. Rising rates of incarceration among African American men contributes to lopsided gender ratios among African Americans in urban areas (Western, 2004: 12).

III. Helping Create More Stable Families in Our Community

A. More Education for Women
Child birth is the single life event that most consistently corresponds with the ending of a woman’s education. (Marini 1984)

The vast majority (~75%) of unmarried mothers in our county stopped their formal education with high school graduation. In contrast, married mothers in Shelby County consistently have completed some college and a sizeable proportion (43%) have a bachelor’s degree or better. In Shelby County the average age at first birth for single mothers is 21; the average age at first birth for married mothers is 28 (Shelby County BCS data, 2006)

When a woman has an education that she is invested in pursuing, she has a tangible reason to delay childbearing, which in turn increases her income, job stability and the likelihood that she’ll marry before she begins her family.

B. Raising Men’s Incomes
The general pattern that emerges from both local and state level data on men’s levels of participation in marriage and parenthood is that having more education does not increase a man’s propensity to be a married parent.

Although more education does not mean a man is less likely to become a single father, earning a higher income does correspond to a reduced rate of single fatherhood. This finding suggests men are more likely to delay parenting until after marriage when they believe they will have the capacity to meaningfully contribute to the financial well being of their families.

Average yearly personal income for a married African American father in Tennessee is $40,592. Average yearly personal income for a married white father is $45,447.

In contrast, the average yearly personal income of a never married African American father is $12,329; and the average yearly personal income of a never married white father is $14,848.

The Will to do Better by Our Kids

Sunday's Commercial Appeal column by Chris Peck featured a presentation by Doug Imig, Director of the Center for Urban Child Policy at The Urban Child Institute, to the LeBonheur Children's Medical Center.

The presentation featured projections about the "Class of 2024" - that is, the kids who were born last year who will be graduating from high school in 2024. Among his findings:

"About 50 percent of the kids in the class of 2024 in Memphis will grow up in poverty,'' he noted.

About one in three will never be comfortable readers. About one in four will have dropped out of high school before graduating. And perhaps 10 percent in each high school year will have an unplanned pregnancy.

These numbers include all students in Shelby County. Exclude the more affluent kids who live in the suburbs from these results, and the picture grows even dimmer for kids living in the heart of Memphis.

Many of the kids who get off to a slow start in school, and who grow up in poverty, never escape these twin burdens. They end up living at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale and clinging to the social service net to simply get by.

The real questions, however, is whether the community has the political will to change the future for these children:

It means thinking of the different outcomes the community would like to see, and changing the politics and social support structure to get to those outcomes.

A place to start, Imig believes, would be for Memphis social service leaders and concerned politicians to search out programs elsewhere that have helped kids and their parents break the mold of their difficult circumstances.

One source for finding such programs is the Promising Practices Network (promisingpractices.net). This national organization has looked at hundreds of social service programs that profess to improve the lives of children. The programs are evaluated carefully and those few that show concrete results are then endorsed as either "proven" practice or showing signs of being a "promising" practice.

What's most important about the presentation given by Dr. Imig is the idea that "Statistics are not destiny. In fact, we know what works with kids to change their lives."By assessing best practices from nationwide programs and taking them to scale based on the eligible kids and families in our community, we can project what kind of a difference we can make in terms of financial and social outcomes in the future. If we invest now, we know that we will make tremendous gains both economically and socially, improving the lives of children and families and making a stronger, safer, more educated, hardworking and well-functioning community free from the legacy of poverty and distress that creates problems for so many of our children.

Click here for the rest of the article from the Commercial Appeal. For more information, you can contact Dr. Imig at dimig@memphis.edu.

Growing Up with a Single Parent: What hurts, What helps

Dear Friends,

We at CUCP have recently come across some really interesting and insightful research on the effects of single parenting on children from the book called Growing Up with a Single Parent: What hurts, What helps by researchers Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur. Their work disaggregates the types of single parent families in a very thoughtful way: all families headed by single parents are not of one kind. Children growing up in families where their primary parent was never married have different outcomes and problems from children growing up in families of divorce and remarriage. One of the most important lessons we can learn from their work is that there are many kinds of single parents and many reasons for single parenting.

Among the findings from their research that we found particularly compelling were:

• Low income – and the sudden drop in income that is often associated with divorce – is the most important factor in children’s lower achievement in single-parent homes, accounting for about half of the disadvantage. Inadequate parental guidance and attention and the lack of ties to community resources accounts for most of the remaining disadvantage.
• A mother’s education is generally regarded as the single best predictor of a child’s school achievement and thus it provides a good benchmark against which to evaluate the importance of other variables. Having a mother with less than a high school degree, as compared with having a mother with a high school degree, doubles the risk of dropping out of school.
• According to our findings, the age of the child at the time of family disruption is not related to the risk of dropping out of school or early childbearing. Children who experience family disruption before they are five years old have about the same chance of dropping out of school and having a child before age twenty as children who experience a disruption during adolescence.
• Moreover, the number of years of exposure to single parenthood does not seem to matter either. Children who live with a single mother for less than five years are about as successful as children who live with a single mother for more than five years. Even multiple changes in the family structure do not discriminate among children from one-parent families. Children who experience two or more disruptions due to divorces and remarriages have about the same risk of dropping out of school and having a teen birth as children who experience only one disruption.
• Income accounted for about 50% of the difference between children in single-parent and two-parent families in all three educational outcomes (test scores, college enrollment and college graduation).
• Children from one-parent families, and especially children who do not have a step-parent attend schools with a higher percentage of minority students and minority teachers than children in two-parent families.
• 2/3 of the difference between children in single-parent families and two-parent families is due to differences in residential mobility. The rest is due to family income. Income and residential mobility together account for all of the educational disadvantage of children living in single-parent families.

We would like for you to remember a few things from this book:

1. Not all single parent families are alike. Never-married, divorced, remarried and step-parent families have varying effects on children.
2. Children from single parent families have a much more difficult time in school and in life than do children from two-parent families.
3. Disruptive events in a child’s life – whether occurring early or later on – can change the trajectory of their potential success. Income, parental involvement, mobility and social capital – the benefits that kids get from their neighborhoods and communities – are incredibly important to their overall social and academic well-being.

For more information, please contact cucp@theurbanchildinstitute.org.

Uninsured Children Update

Dear Colleagues,

We’d like to share with you a recent fact sheet produced by the Center for Urban Child Policy at The Urban Child Institute. This fact sheet estimates the population from 0 to 8 (and 0 to 3) in Memphis and Shelby County that is eligible for TennCare, but remains uninsured.

Among the key findings:

• There are currently 259,476 children between 0 and 8 on TennCare in the state of Tennessee
• Approximately 45,000 of these children reside in Shelby County (32,000 within the City of Memphis).
• By a conservative estimate, 21,465 children in the state between 0 and 8 qualify for TennCare but currently lack insurance coverage of any kind.
• 3,700 of these uninsured children reside in Shelby County with 1,120 in the City of Memphis
• 1,550 children 0-3 in Shelby County qualify for TennCare but are uninsured.

The Center for Urban Child Policy conducts public policy analysis and outreach as part of The Urban Child Institute in Memphis, Tennessee. The Center is committed to building public will and a sustained political voice for children in order to improve the well-being of all children and their families.

We welcome your questions and comments.

Sincerely,

Frances Wright
Doug Imig

Safety Net Programs Show Holes in the System

Moving people from public assistance to financial independence is a delicate matter. It involves coordinating so many competing elements - child care, food, transportation, utilities, rent, clothing and incidentals. Many families rob Peter to pay Paul, skating by month to month, living paycheck to paycheck because the low-skill, low-wage jobs where they have found employment do not pay a living wage, a salary that will support families with children. The working poor have to make very difficult choices - to keep the lights on or to buy food (pantries and food aid agencies across the country are experiencing shortages presently); to repair the car or to buy medicine for the sick kids; to pay the rent or to fill up the gas tank to get to work. And at least in Memphis, public transportation is not a viable option for many people. Erratic bus schedules and inconvenient bus lines make getting to and from work - with kids and groceries in tow - a mighty challenge.

So some states are trying to help their working poor, the people who have moved from public assistance to paid employment but who are still having trouble getting by. States are giving monthly cash stipends to working adults to help them make ends meet.

From the New York Times article:

The women are pioneers in an emerging social experiment as states across the country try to go beyond simply moving people off welfare. Over the last two years, officials in Arkansas and at least a dozen other states have announced plans to extend the safety net — through monthly cash payments — to thousands of low-income workers struggling to gain a foothold in the work world. Arkansas provides poor working parents with $204 a month, plus bonuses for staying employed, for up to two years. Oregon offers $150 a month for up to a year. Virginia gives $50 a month for up to a year. And the California Legislature is considering a plan, proposed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, to provide $40 a month to 41,000 working families that receive food stamps. “The goal had been getting parents off of welfare,” said Jack Tweedie of the National Conference of State Legislatures, who counsels states on poverty issues and has advised Arkansas officials. “The emphasis now is much more on work and helping parents stay in work.”

This is a laudable effort. Strengthening the safety net for working families - the adults who are trying their best to get on and stay on their feet - is of utmost importance. It is the right thing to do to care for families with children. Unfortunately, these cash-assistance efforts miss the point: many jobs in our country do not pay a living wage. They do not have a career ladder that provides upward mobility for families. They are jobs for an expendable workforce, often without benefits or full-time employment. They are jobs that do not pay enough for a family to get a leg up and out of poverty, or even low-income status.

An adult earning minimum wage - $5.85/hour - working full-time, year-round will still only make $12,000 per year. For a family of three, the Federal Poverty Level is just over $17,000 - which means that even if there are two adults earning minimum wage in full-time, year-round work, their combined annual income will only be $24,000, which still puts them squarely in the low-income bracket. The added cash-assistance boost will help a little bit, but not enough to address the root causes of poverty: a well-maintained system of institutionalized poverty in which the growing divide between the very rich and the very poor spans wider every year. Barbara Kellerman from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government discusses this divide here.

What we have is a compensatory system, a well-maintained welfare state that subsidizes poverty rather than addressing the problems at its roots. While well-intentioned, programs that throw $40 or $150 here and there at families in need may help temporarily, but they hardly speak to the deeper problems of servitude and cheap labor which keep people from moving up in their careers. State-sponsored charity will not help families in the long run. It will not help the children in these families who are growing up in poverty, in schools where many of their peers are in the same situation, in communities marred by poverty and desperation.

What we need is comprehensive wage reform where all jobs pay a living wage - $10 an hour with benefits or $12 an hour without benefits - and in doing this, families can become financially independent, care for their children, plan for the future and not have to make difficult choices about which bills to pay this month and which to put off until next month.

For more about safety nets and who picks up the pieces when lives fall apart because of sporadic or underpaying and precarious employment, read The Missing Class.

The following is my favorite passage from the book:

Those of us who want women to be able to stand on their own feet do not like to hear that the children the women leave behind during the workday may be doomed to repeat the lives of their poor mothers. But in a world where high-quality child care is available only to the wealthy or the lucky, a child's prospects can be irreparably damaged if her mother disappears for many hours every day, leaving her in the care of someone who lets drug addicts into the house. What matters more, the mother's shot at present-day security or the next generation's potential for future success? At the moment, we may be addressing the problems of the parents, only to see a "sacrificed generation" emerge, a cohort of children condemned by poor schooling or entanglement in the criminal justice system to a life not unlike the one their parents were running hard to escape (p177).

Libraries make cities stronger

According to a report published in January 2007 by the Urban Libraries Council, libraries are one of the most important threads in the social fabric of communities, especially supporting the development of early literacy skills and childhood education.

One of the things we know best is that what happens early on matters most later in life. A report from the University of Chicago shows that early investments prove to be the most socially and fiscally beneficial:

Public libraries have four key strategies for building early literacy:

1. Public education campaigns
2. Parental training workshops
3. Tailored technical assistance for childcare and other children's service agencies
4. Implement model literacy programs

The report from the Urban Libraries Council gives several good examples of early childhood literacy programs that have shown positive results.

The Brooklyn Public Library targets "parents and caregivers of babies and toddlers" with multilingual flyers about library programs. They also give new infant goody bags to hospitals that include applications for library cards to help new parents get oriented towards early literacy experiences for their babies.

The Providence Public Library has an initiative called "Cradle to Crayons" which is a "free nine-week program (that) focuses on literacy development of children ages 1-3."

The program has three key components: First, it is designed to introduce young families to the library in a comfortable setting and to develop early literacy skills through songs, rhymes, storytelling and play. Library staff members offer tips that can be used at home to encourage an early interest in reading and learning. Second, it invites local child service agencies to share information on child development, health and safety. Third, it provides Learning and Reading (LARK) Kits that contain ten books, music and visual aids that that parents can check out from the library and use at home with their children.

Public libraries contribute to an overall community sense of well-being and long-term development, starting at the earliest ages through adulthood, reaching the youngest children and their parents and the adults who surround and nurture them in the community.

Given what we know about the role libraries play in promoting early literacy experiences and the positive benefits children and communities reap from this investment, we as a community in Memphis and Shelby County should take a very close look at the role our own libraries play, and the potential they show for encouraging young readers to embark on a literacy journey that will last a lifetime.

Why does no one ever comment on our blog?

The earliest intervention is reading at home to children before they reach Kindergarten

From the Associated Press today: When her son Dylan was just 6 years old, Kristen Wahlmeier noticed that he had to be bribed to read: A surfing trip here or a pair of new shoes there before he'd pick up a book. Worried as she watched him struggle, a gnawing fear crept into her stomach: Her only son, with big blue eyes and the jones for Star Wars, might be headed for a special education classroom. Instead, teachers at his suburban Portland school intervened immediately, putting him into extra reading and vocabulary tutoring every day before school. It paid off. Now, officials in districts across the country are rapidly adopting similar early intervention programs, hoping that steering a child away from expensive special education classes later will pay off for them, too, in cost savings.

The Center for Urban Child Policy released a policy brief earlier this year about literacy rates in Memphis and Shelby County among low-income parents. Among our findings were that low-income parents do many things right when it comes to preparing their children for school - and a lifetime love of reading - like telling stories, singing songs, playing games and counting numbers. These "in-kind" pre-literacy activities are very important to children's developing minds. However, when it comes to the most important pre-literacy activity - reading to children - low-income parents in Shelby County lag far behind parents nationwide.

More from the AP: Traditionally, children haven't been identified for special education until third or fourth grade. They end up costing roughly twice as much, or about $12,000 a year, to educate an average student, including about $11 billion in federal dollars every year.

These findings fit nicely with a very troublesome headline in today's Commercial Appeal:
City council may cut funding for Memphis City Schools

The Memphis City Council is considering withholding some or all of the $93.5 million requested by the city school district, a controversial move that could provide city residents with a tax break instead of a tax hike.

This triad of issues - Special Education, Early Literacy and School Funding - are critically important to see as inter-related in our community. Fourth-grade reading scores are both evidence of the past and a window to the future: they are evidence of early literacy experiences and predictors of future experiences. (Prison analysts use 4th grade reading scores to determine projected prison populations...)

• 1 in 7 students (14%) are categorized as Students With Disabilities.
• 4 in 5 students (82%) are categorized as Economically Disadvantaged
• 1 in 3 people in Shelby County are functionally illiterate - meaning they have difficulty reading street signs, newspaper headlines, prescriptions and job applications

Too few parents and young children are reading together regularly. Too many children have learning difficulties which are costly for them and for us, the taxpayers. Too often, children are the last priority of policymaking and the first to be considered for budget cuts.

Things we can do that will help:

1. Invest in early literacy experiences for children. Access to Books from Birth, access to public libraries and to quality time spent reading with parents and caregivers is critical to initiate a love of reading.
2. Help parents read to their children. Parents may be insecure about their reading ability. The Memphis Literacy Council can give parents with difficulty reading tools to improve their skills and quality time with their kids and books.
   
3. Understand the connections between poverty/low-income status, learning disabilities and school finance. Short-sighted budget cuts that affect children will not improve the quality of our city now nor in the future. What gets cut now, we will all have to pay for later.
   
4. Make children a priority from the start - not an afterthought at the end.
   

The SCHIP Saga Continues

Uninsured children may still have a chance under SCHIP, the public health insurance program that is jointly financed by federal and state governments.

According to a New York Times report today:

The Bush administration violated federal law last year when it restricted states’ ability to provide health insurance to children of middle-income families, and its new policy is therefore unenforceable, lawyers from the Government Accountability Office said Friday.

Under the Aug. 17 directive, states cannot expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program to cover youngsters with family incomes over 250 percent of the federal poverty level ($53,000 for a family of four) unless they can prove that they already cover 95 percent of eligible children below twice the poverty level ($42,400).

Moreover, in such states, children who lose or drop private coverage must be uninsured for 12 months before they can enroll in the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and co-payments in the public program must be similar to those in private plans.

Moreover, now while the debate has been revived, the public should weigh in on the appellation SCHIP to reframe the issue in such a way that it is an undeniable children's rights issue. S-CHIP as it stands sounds like a computer or technical problem, akin to the Y2K frenzy, not an issue of utmost importance pertaining to the rights of children to medical care.

The name SCHIP gives no indication that the bill is fundamentally about protecting children by assuring that they have access to quality health care, that they have a reliable medical home, that they have a well-coordinated team of health care providers and reliable adults overseeing their medical well-being. This name does not invoke public sentiments of empathy and protection as it should. Other states - like Minnesota's Badger Care or Tennessee's TennderCare - are catchy and sticky.

Some suggestions (others welcome):
The Defense of Children's Health Act
Protecting Children's Health Act
Health Coverage for Children Act

The working poor

The New York Times is reporting today on the effect of the economic downturn on America's working poor - the bootstraps folks who are self-employed, the entrepreneurs who teach music lessons and do handiwork, the fabric of the country who work for themselves and who hold jobs that once gave them ample overtime hours that gave their family a cushion of income, a buffer that gave them a sense of security which is eroding paycheck by paycheck.

Says the New York Times, "The gradual erosion of the paycheck has become a stealth force driving the American economic downturn. Most of the attention has focused on the loss of jobs and the risk of layoffs. But the less-noticeable shrinking of hours and pay for millions of workers around the country appears to be a bigger contributor to the decline, which has already spread from housing and finance to other important areas of the economy."

One woman's monthly income has decreased by one-quarter - while she once could depend on $600 per week, she now makes do on $450 per week. Trips to the store are rationed. Families visit parks instead of museums. Parents take their children to thrift stores instead of the mall. (Heck, I'm shopping at ICB on Jefferson these days...) This decline has brought her salary from $31,000 to $23,000 - where once she was middle-income, she is now considered low-income, a phenomenon described in The Missing Class, a book about America's near poor.

According to the February 2008 Tennessee Labor Report, 20,000 people in Memphis City are unemployed (6.7%) - and this might be a conservative figure given that this only measures people who have actively sought work in the past few weeks. What about other people who have given up looking for work?

People who could once make it on one income are now taking part-time jobs to supplement what they've lost in earnings. This means more children spend less time with their parents, more families are stressed by financial worries, more families have fewer buffer resources to fall back on in case of emergencies or special occasions - a sick child, a flat tire or a prom.

New Calculator Factors Chances for Very Premature Infants

One of the most difficult questions about the survival of premature babies is how to best help them. Babies are now able to survive life outside the womb much earlier than before because of advances in medicine about how to best treat neonates. And now, doctors and researchers have come up with a formula for determining a baby's chances for survival and potential complications later in life.

The New York Times reports today that the new method uses an online calculator developed for such cases factoring in traits like birth weight and sex as well as gestational age and whether or not the baby was a multiple birth. (Incidentally, baby girls born early have a better chance for survival than do boys.)

In theory, at least, the calculator would seem to favor treating girls, because, all else being equal, their odds for survival are better.

From the New York Times article: The study included 4,446 infants born at 22 to 25 weeks at 19 hospitals in the Neonatal Research Network; 744, generally the smallest and most premature, did not receive intensive care, and all died. The babies were assessed at birth, and the survivors were examined again shortly before turning 2. Over all, half the infants died, half the survivors had neurological impairments, and half the impairments were severe. Many survivors spent months in the hospital, at a typical cost of $3,400 a day. The researchers estimated that if all babies born at 22 to 23 weeks received intensive care, for every 100 infants treated there would be 1,749 extra hospital days and zero to nine additional survivors, with zero to three having no impairment.

What is most compelling about this study is that based on this data, researchers are able to make projections about what kind of future these children will face, and what the social cost will be to care for them long-term, not only medically, but educationally as well. We know that low birth weight children face many more educational obstacles and often need special attention in school, and that students with disabilities - including those with Individualized Educational Plans - cost the school system and community more.

These problems are especially relevant for our community since Memphis has an exceptionally high rate of low birthweight babies and infant mortality - a well-known problem that was publicized in a Commercial Appeal article in 2005.

One of the researchers - Dr. Nehal Parikh - said the following about how the new formula will help parents decide what is the best treatment option for their child: “We lay out the facts, rather than our own opinions,” Dr. Parikh said, “because we’re not the ones taking these babies home.” This is only partly true. The choice of treatment for a child is an individual decision, but the implications for society are far-reaching, especially considering the care and cost associated with children with disabilities throughout their lifetimes - not only the family's personal cost but society's investment in their future.

An element of forward thinking which is not covered in the article is the root causes of pre-term births, low birth weight and infant mortality. Prenatal care - including access to and use of health care and routine doctor's visits - and proper nutrition are essential to growing and delivering healthy babies, and the community at large must take a more proactive role in promoting healthy pregnancies.

We need to intervene in the lives of the children before they are delivered early, and before we have to make the decision whether 22 weeks or 23 weeks is a viable gestational age for a child. We need to intervene in the lives of the children in utero - investing in the mothers and assuring that they have routine, quality, available medical care and proper nutrition so that their babies are healthy from the start.

The Child Well-Being Data Book written and published by The Urban Child Institute has more information about the health conditions of infants and children in Memphis and Shelby County.

New report from "Every Child Matters" on key geographic differences in child well-being

Every Child Matters has issued a new report, Geography Matters: Child Well-Being in the States, which shows wide gaps in key indicators of child well-being from state to state.

The report:
* Describes critical components of the 'grid of opportunity' that needs to be intact in order to support the well-being of children and families, and makes clear that for too many children, that grid has broken down.
* Supports the idea that the well-being of children is a 'path dependent' process. In other words, the start kids get in life sets them on the path that will take them to school and will prepare them for life.
* Supports the idea that the best way to insure the well-being of families and communities later on is to invest in the well-being of young children today.
* Focuses on the critical relationship between the environment in which children are raised and their well-being in school and life. As recent studies suggest, for example, children living in high crime neighborhoods can be a full year behind their peers when they reach school.

Among the key findings of the report:
Children in the lowest ranked states for each indicator are:
• Twice as likely to die in their first year as children inthe highest ranked state.
• Three times more likely to die between the ages of 1-14.
•Roughly three times more likely to die between the ages of 15-19.
• Three times more likely to be born to a teenage mother.• Five times more likely to have mothers who received late or no prenatal care.
• Three times more likely to live in poverty.
• Five times more likely to be uninsured.
• Eight times more likely to be incarcerated.
• Thirteen times more likely to die from abuse and neglect.

Cloth diapers are (mostly) more environmentally-friendly than Pampers or Huggies

According to the Green Lantern - Slate's go-to-guy for environmental questions - cloth diapers are more environmentally-friendly than are plastic disposable diapers, so long as you clean the reusable diapers in an energy-efficient washing machine.

From the article:

The bottom line is that cloth diapers are greener than run-of-the-mill Pampers and Huggies, as long as you're committed to an energy-efficient laundry regimen. But that commitment takes more than just an EnergyStar washing machine and a clothing line for air drying. It also takes time, a commodity which will be in startlingly short supply once your offspring drops. And thus we must delve into the ceaseless conflict between idealism and reality.

Here is where you can learn more about the cloth-plastic diaper debate!

The (Lack of) Marriage Phenomenon

Emily Yoffe, the snarky writer who does the "Dear Prudence" column at Slate, has written today about the increasing phenomenon of births to single mothers. Two things I find quite interesting in this article: first is the ample anecdotal evidence that woman after woman expresses the desire to marry the father of their children, but it is the fathers who balk at marriage - preferring to sidle up to other women and sire other children without making a commitment to the (other) mother(s) of their children; second is that only 23% of single-mother births occur to teens - the growing number of single-mother births are to women aged 25-29. Twenty-three percent is nothing to sneeze at, but it seems like there is a distinctly different phenomenon happening here.

The cultural question - that in the post-modern age marriage is passe and single parenthood acceptable - is an interesting one. Having children outside of wedlock clearly does not have the stigma that it did fifty years ago, but the argument that children in fragile families increases social stratification and disparity between the poor and non-poor is one that could gain traction. In essence, how do we talk about the culture of non-marriage and the culture of inequality - and what's the right tack to take in alleviating child poverty, like creating structural conditions that make child-rearing (no matter what kind of family a child is born into) more friendly through policies informed by best practice that are sound investments and make sense in the short and long-term.

The moral of the story throughout all the various narratives - including the references below - is that children born to single parents face many more difficulties in life because of the precariousness that accompanies single parenthood, most importantly poverty.

Among the references included in the article are:

• Fragile Families @ Princeton University. They have been studying 5,000 families over 10 years, tracking the families - nearly 3/4 of whom are children born to single parents.
  
• Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age by Kay Hymowitz who writes about the chief source of inequality in America being the marriage gap.
  
• Isabell Sawhill's Congressional testimony on non-marital births and child poverty.
  
• And this that we all read several weeks ago: Poverty in early childhood poisons the brain, the American Associationfor the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston heard on Friday.
• Finally - and this reference was not in the article but it's relevant - the State of Our Unions 2007.
  

No Ground Floor For Reporting Graduation Rates: Why It Matters for Memphis and Shelby County

Today's New York Times is reporting on a story that I have long held to be an incredibly important one, not just for the country but especially for our local community.

Graduation rates are in essence a way to measure how well we've done from pre-Kindergarten forward educating a new generation of workers, parents, consumers and citizens. Telling the truth about graduation rates - and about proficiency on state and national standardized tests - is incredibly important for assessing the current and future conditions in our society - that is to say, how will these young people contribute? Are they likely to continue with their education? To become young and single parents or to delay parenthood? To get and keep well-paying jobs? To move out of Shelby County or to stay local?

7 in 10 students graduate on time from Memphis City Schools. 8 in 10 students graduate on time from Shelby County Schools. 9 in 10 students graduate on time in Tennessee. (TN Department of Education, 2007) According to the TCAP, 8 in 10 students are proficient in Reading and Math in Memphis and Shelby County - but according to the NAEP, only 1 in 4 are considered proficient. (Fortunately for Tennessee, the TCAP is used to determine compliance with No Child Left Behind - if the NAEP were used, we'd be in big trouble, as would many other states!)

From the New York Times article (commentary in italics):

• The law also allowed states to establish their own goals for improving graduation rates. Many set them low. Nevada, for instance, pledged to get just 50 percent of its students to graduate on time. And since the law required no annual measures of progress, California proposed that even a one-tenth of 1 percent annual improvement in its graduation rate should suffice. States are not required to use a uniform formula for reporting graduation rates, so there is no standard - no ground floor - for comparing achievement nationwide. Margaret Spellings, Secretary of Education, has encouraged the U.S. Congress to pass a law requiring states to use a standardized, universal and uniform method to report graduation rates. We need to encourage this endeavor.
  
• Most troublesome to some experts was the way the No Child law's mandate to bring students to proficiency on tests, coupled with its lack of a requirement that they graduate, created a perverse incentive to push students to drop out. If low-achieving students leave school early, a school's performance can rise. In the push toward proficiency, we have lowered standards to make them more easily achievable by more students, giving the false appearance of "success" while cheating students - and ourselves and future generations - in the process.
  
• The law also allowed states to establish their own goals for improving graduation rates. Many set them low. Nevada, for instance, pledged to get just 50 percent of its students to graduate on time. And since the law required no annual measures of progress, California proposed that even a one-tenth of 1 percent annual improvement in its graduation rate should suffice. With more than 13,000 public school districts across the country - taking into consideration states' rights to set their own educational standards and the federal government's desire to provide oversight and promote achievement nationwide - there is an inherent tension between state and federal mandates. And unfortunately, a generation of students is getting lost in the process.
  
• Most troublesome to some experts was the way the No Child law's mandate to bring students to proficiency on tests, coupled with its lack of a requirement that they graduate, created a perverse incentive to push students to drop out. If low-achieving students leave school early, a school's performance can rise. Tennessee is taking steps toward dealing with the graduation rate crisis by eliminating the Gateway exam as an obstacle to completing high school. Instead it will be replaced during the 2009-2010 school year by end-of-course exams in content subject areas and calculated as a part of the student's final grade. However, changing the test does not imply fixing the system. More students graduating - the same as more students earning scores of proficient - does not indicate that they are prepared for further education or the workforce.
  

It used to be that a person could succeed in life in the U.S. with only a high school diploma, but this is not the case anymore. A higher education degree - Associate's or Bachelor's degree - is the new high school diploma. In conclusion, it is imperative that we keep a watchful eye on both graduation rates and achievement scores.

Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America's Children

Paying the Price.
This February 2008 study -- conducted by The Urban Institute and funded by the National Council of La Raza -- documents the impact of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) worksite raids on the children of undocumented workers. The findings indicate that the children of those arrested in the raids experienced family separation, economic hardship, schooling interruptions, and mental trauma.

The findings are based on a study of three communities that experienced large-scale worksite raids in 2007: Greeley, Colorado; Grand Island, Nebraska; and New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Over 900 adults were arrested in the three study sites, and the parents among them collectively had over 500 children. In two of the sites, 79 percent and 88 percent of children were ages ten and younger. In one site, more than half of the children were ages five and younger.

First in the Family: Advice About College from First-Generation Students

For two years, Next Generation Press/What Kids Can Do has been gathering the wisdom of first-generation college students on the critical issues of college access and success. The result is a growing collection of resources by and for first-generation students. (Created with support from the Lumina Foundation.)

To learn more, visit: First in the Family

More than 100 Cities Helping Families Claim Earned Income Tax Credit

by Sarah Bainton Kahn
http://www.nlc.org/articles/articleItems/Vol31No9030308/EITCEvents.aspx

As families throughout the country file their tax returns, city leaders are hosting campaign kickoff events to alert low-income working families about their eligibility for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

Local elected officials in more than 100 cities and towns are taking part in these campaigns, in partnership with coalitions composed of local United Way of America organizations, financial institutions and other businesses, universities, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), chambers of commerce and nonprofit community organizations. Campaign kickoff events have included news conferences, announcement of new services and products, and speeches by local officials.

About the EITC
The EITC is a refundable federal income tax credit that benefits low-income working families and also brings federal dollars back into the community. Often cited as the nation’s most effective federal anti-poverty program, the IRS estimates that EITC returns brought $30.4 billion to more than 19 million families in 2007. For a family of four, taxpayers must earn less than $39,783 to claim the EITC, and the maximum refund would be $4,716.

In addition to raising awareness about the EITC, outreach campaigns inform residents about free tax preparation services, such as Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) sites. City officials can be instrumental in offering space for VITA sites, recruiting tax preparation volunteers and increasing the visibility of campaign efforts.