Womenstake

Teen Parents Falling Through the Cracks

by Lara S. Kaufmann, Senior Counsel, 
National Women’s Law Center 

I know, I know – we’re in a recession, the economy is terrible, it’s a tough time for everyone. Still, I try to be hopeful. But then I wake up and see a headline like this one: Program for Teen Parents Dropped: About 100 students in county schools learned skills to help them graduate while caring for their kids.

I’ve heard of this program – it’s called GRADS (Graduation, Reality, and Dual-Role Skills), and the curriculum has been used in a number of states. In the Springfield, Ohio area it serves about 100 students per year – predominantly female, but some are male – and about 25 of them attend the school that is cutting the program. The Ohio Department of Education did a study of the program’s effectiveness, and found that teen parents involved in GRADS are more likely to stay in school, to get early prenatal care, and to increase their knowledge of “positive parenting practices.” They also are less likely to have a second child (critical to dropout prevention) and to deliver low-weight babies. So why was it dropped? Budget cutbacks, of course! It costs $99,000 a year to run the program, and the state reimburses the district for only $33,000 of that. The superintendent explained that the school simply can no longer afford to have the program there. He said that perhaps guidance counselors can work with parenting students instead, and added: “We are looking at if there’s any way at all that the students could be served.” Whoa.

What Now for Teen Moms?

by Lara S. Kaufmann, Senior Counsel, 
National Women’s Law Center 

Today’s Washington Post features an article about MEI Futures School, the D.C. Charter School for teen moms that is closing down, and the impact its closure will have on the teen moms who go there.  The school was open for less than two years when its charter was revoked by the D.C. Charter School Board. Now, I do not yet know enough about why the school was closed to speculate about whether the closure is necessary or justified.

If the academic offerings at MEI Futures did not provide its students with educational opportunities equal to those of students in other D.C. public high schools, as article suggested – for example, it said that only two of the students were on track to graduate this year – that might violate Title IX and must be remedied.

But I can’t help but wonder: What now?  Many of these girls live in dorm rooms at the school, with their babies, who they take to the on-site child care center on their way to class. Will they find an affordable and welcoming place to live? Will they get access to affordable child care for their babies?  How will they get to and from school and daycare with their babies each day? Will they stay engaged and finish high school if they do not get the support they were getting from the MEI Futures faculty and fellow students?

In their new school setting, will they be stigmatized and discriminated against in violation of Title IX?   DCPS must find other ways to meet their needs, so the girls do not get discouraged and drop out – which would have terrible consequences for them, their children, and the rest of the community. We hope D.C. will take care of its students and future citizens. We’ll be watching.

National Day to Improve High School Graduation Rates

by Lara S. Kaufmann, Senior Counsel, 
National Women’s Law Center 

Today is the National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. There are so many reasons it’s imperative to prevent teen pregnancy, but I want to draw your attention to just one: EDUCATION. Girls who get pregnant as teenagers are less likely to graduate from high school than those who delay childbearing. In fact, in a survey of high school dropouts conducted by the Gates Foundation, almost one-half of the females surveyed said that pregnancy and parenting responsibilities were factors in their decisions to drop out.

So pregnancy prevention doubles as a dropout prevention strategy. Schools that want to boost their graduation rates should invest resources in teen pregnancy prevention, including by offering sex education classes that give students medically accurate and comprehensive information, so that teens can make informed and responsible decisions. They can choose to have children later in life, but now is the time for them to focus on their education.

It works the other way too. Dropout prevention doubles as a pregnancy prevention strategy. Girls who are engaged in school, do well academically, are involved in sports or other activities – or who have strong goals for the future and beliefs that they will achieve those goals – are less likely to end up pregnant than those who are disengaged or otherwise show signs of dropping out. And once they have dropped out, certain groups of girls are more likely to get pregnant as teenagers. So schools that make serious efforts to keep girls in school will also reduce the likelihood that those girls will get pregnant.

It is critical that schools recognize the roles they can play and work to solve this problem from both sides. It’s also vital that policymakers make sure schools have adequate funding to address these problems effectively. Girls who drop out face high rates of unemployment, low wages, poor health and limited (if any) access to health insurance. They are more likely to need to rely on public support programs. Their children are more likely to have health problems and to drop out themselves. And so it goes . . .

We must put the brakes on this cycle, by preventing teen pregnancy and by helping girls to stay in school and graduate. Of course that’s not the end of the line – these days, the jobs most likely to pay a living wage and benefits are those that require a college degree – but it’s an essential first step.

Dropouts Need Fair Pay Too!

by Lara S. Kaufmann, Senior Counsel, 
National Women’s Law Center 

Many of you may have heard that at every level of education, females earn less than males with similar educational backgrounds. But did you know that the wage gap between men and women is the highest among high school dropouts? It’s true. Female high school dropouts earn only 63 percent of what male dropouts earn, which comes to about $9,100 less annually, on average. In fact, it is not until the average woman has some college education that she earns more than the average man without a high school diploma. Pay equity matters at all income levels, especially for the women who are struggling to make ends meet to support their families. That’s just one of the reasons it’s so important that the Senate passes the Paycheck Fairness Act. For more information about low earnings and the other economic consequences faced by female high school dropouts, see NWLC’s report, When Girls Don’t Graduate, We All Fail: A Call to Improve High School Graduation Rates for Girls, as well as other materials here. 

See who else is writing about workplace fairness for women on this Equal Pay Day.

Sugar & Spice – We Can Do Better, Right?

by Fatima Goss Graves, Senior Counsel
and Lara S. Kaufmann, Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center  

This week NBC’s Today Show profiled a single sex school located in suburban St. Louis. The segment began with a video showing boys engaging in calisthenics and the girls sitting quietly at their desks reading and writing. Boys were permitted to learn anywhere in the classroom – under their desks, in tents, standing on chairs… no similar alternative learning opportunities were provided for girls.  And the reading materials for the two genders were quite different – boys read stories featuring monsters while girls read stories featuring movie stars. Yet when the school administrator was interviewed, she insisted that the school avoided stereotyping in the classroom – huh? 

While we appreciate that the show provided more than one perspective – Latifah Lyles, VP of NOW, definitely provided an important public service by explaining that single sex schools are not a silver bullet for our educational woes. But there was a significant gap in the coverage.  Not once did the show mention that many of the programs in question (even potentially the one profiled in the piece) may not be lawful. This is no small oversight. It is critical that school districts take this into account when taking the plunge into single sex programming. 

Here’s the thing – we’re not saying we oppose all single sex programs. To the contrary, as we’ve said in the past, there are single sex programs that don’t operate based on stereotypes about the abilities and needs of their students and that may meet the very rigorous standards of the Constitution and Title IX (not to mention the many state laws that apply). But it makes no sense to engage in a debate about the value of single sex schools without even mentioning whether they are permitted under the law.  We’re convinced that the media can do better next time.

If You Didn’t Catch it, Heads Up!

by Lara Kaufmann, Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center

In case you missed it, we hosted a webinar on Wednesday about “Promising Practices for Helping Pregnant and Parenting Students Succeed.”  You can download the presentation and materials here. First, I spoke briefly about the connection between teen pregnancy/parenting and dropout prevention, and explained how Title IX applies to schools’ treatment of their pregnant and parenting students.  Then we heard from the forces behind two school programs that are making a difference for pregnant and parenting students – Christy Challender, principal of New Horizons High School in Pasco, WA, and Elizabeth Link, founder/director of Project Opportunity in Fairfax County, VA – and each of them highlighted the features of their programs and the strategies that have helped them to be successful at what they do.

We had over 100 participants in attendance and got lots of great questions from the audience. But this webinar was just the beginning. We want to start a dialogue and hope to learn about other promising practices around the country – not only separate programs for pregnant and parenting students, but also strategies for meeting these students’ needs within their regular high schools. And to provide a resource for people interested in different ways to help pregnant and parenting students succeed, we are also compiling, and will post on our webpage, information about promising practices we discover.  So please, contact us if you know of a program we should know about – or if you are or have been a pregnant or parenting student and have experienced what you think is unfair treatment by your school. And stay tuned . . .

Back to School or Back in Time?

by Lara S. Kaufmann, Senior Advisor
National Women’s Law Center

This year, for many public school students across the U.S., “Back to School” means something different than it used to. A growing number of students in a wide variety of states all over the country will be in single-gender classrooms, separated from their peers of the opposite sex.

Single-sex public school classes are popping up all over the country (some have estimated that over 500 public schools will have single-sex classrooms this fall), and the number has been growing steadily since 2006. That is when the Department of Education revised longstanding Title IX regulations to make it easier for schools to adopt single-sex programs. Why is that a problem? Because Title IX and the U.S. Constitution contain safeguards to ensure that single-sex programs in public schools serve only carefully defined and non-discriminatory purposes, do not perpetuate stereotypes about the interests, abilities or learning styles of either gender, and do not result in unequal educational opportunities. The permissive 2006 regulations fly in the face of these safeguards. And as we suspected, by all reports, many of the single-sex programs being adopted by public schools today are based on harmful stereotypes and do not provide equality of opportunity for the excluded gender (or for those who want to continue learning in a coeducational setting). 

Proponents of single-sex education are telling schools and parents that separating boys and girls in school will improve their education. But these claims are not supported by the evidence. They rely on extreme and overbroad generalizations about the differences between boys’ and girls’ brains and how they learn – for example, that teachers should smile at girls and look them in the eye, but should not look boys directly in the eye or smile at them; and that boys – but not girls – should be given time limits for academic tasks.  In reality, every individual is different. Scientists say that males and females are more alike than they are different. And all of the focus on separation by gender takes attention and resources away from the school reforms most likely to make a difference, like smaller classes, better teachers, and increased parental involvement.

ACLU Shakes Things Up in Kentucky

by Lara S. Kaufmann, Senior Advisor
National Women’s Law Center

I know that Kentucky is nowhere near an ocean, but the ACLU is certainly making waves there. Earlier this week, the organization filed an amended complaint in a case challenging a school district’s single-sex middle school classes as unlawful and discriminatory. The complaint alleges that the separate boys’ and girls’ classes are fundamentally unequal and violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the Equal Educational Opportunities Act, and the state sex equity law. The complaint expands on previous claims brought by a private lawyer against the school district and other entities, and also names as a defendant the U.S. Department of Education, challenging as illegal and unconstitutional the Department’s 2006 regulations encouraging schools to adopt single-sex educational programs.

This is an important case, and we look forward to seeing how it unfolds. Single-sex programs, even with good intentions, tend to be based on harmful stereotypes that limit opportunities for both girls and boys. The Constitution and Title IX contain safeguards to ensure that single-sex programs serve only carefully defined and appropriate purposes, do not perpetuate stereotypes about the interests, abilities or learning styles of either gender, and do not result in discrimination in educational opportunities. Unfortunately, the Department of Education’s 2006 revision of the Title IX regulations – adopted against strong opposition by the public and many experts, including the NWLC – rolled back these safeguards to permit more sex-segregated educational programs based on discrimination and stereotyping, without requiring equality of opportunity for the excluded gender (assuming that equality in separate programs is even possible).

Thank you, Congress

by Lara Kaufmann, Senior Advisor
National Women’s Law Center

Ever wonder what Congress is up to while most of the country (or the media, at least) is focused on the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination? Well, the House Science and Technology Committee (the Research and Science Education Subcommittee) had a hearing this morning about the participation of women and girls in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) studies and careers. And we understand that Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson plans to introduce the Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Act of 2008, which provides for federal programs to address the institutional and cultural barriers to recruitment and retention of women faculty in science and engineering fields, including: workshops to increase awareness of implicit gender bias in grant review, hiring, tenure, promotion, and selection for other honors based on merit; extended grant support for caregivers; and improved demographic data collection on federal grant-making. We welcome and appreciate Congress’ attention to these important issues.

7 Questions with NWLC's Lara Kaufmann

by Jessica Lauredan, Outreach Intern
National Women’s Law Center

This post is part of a series profiling our blog authors.

Lara Kaufmann is Senior Advisor for Education and Employment at NWLC.

Q: The Senate’s recent vote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was a setback in the movement to make pay equity a reality. What will happen next? And how can women join the fight for fair pay?
Lara: The fight is not over yet! We didn’t get the 60 votes necessary to move to the next big step in the Senate — scheduling a debate and a vote on the merits of the bill — but we got very close, and we are calling on the Senate leadership to continue to bring up the bill until it passes. Women (and men) who support equal pay can help by contacting their Senators and encouraging them to support (or, in some cases, to continue supporting) the bill. There are simple instructions on our website for how to do this. It only takes a minute, and it’s really worth it — Senators do pay attention to what their constituents want. Also, there are two more bills pending before Congress right now that address fair pay, one called the Paycheck Fairness Act and one called the Fair Pay Act. Our fact sheet on Pay Equity has information on both of those initiatives too.

Q: The Fair Pay Act has come before the Senate during an election year. Do you think the bill will have an impact on the campaigns, or vice versa?
Lara:  Both, actually. It is just a coincidence that this is being considered in an election year (the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was introduced following the Supreme Court’s May 2007 decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, and the House of Representatives passed it back in July 2007). But because of the timing, it may be discussed during presidential debates, which means that more Americans will learn about it than otherwise might, and I think that's a good thing. Senators Clinton and Obama were original cosponsors of the bill and support it, while Senator McCain stated to reporters that he opposes it. We hope voters will take the opportunity to ask all three Senators about this issue and press them to support, or continue to support, the bill.