With the request of a Tennessee lawmaker to base receipt of public cash assistance for families with school-age children on whether the children make passing grades in school, this invites Louisiana policy-makers to consider the question and to review the state’s own efforts in tying receipt of these benefits to attendance.
The proposed Volunteer State law would mandate that children at least
pass their courses or tests or else the family might be penalized up to 30
percent of that benefit. It would not affect non-cash assistance programs, but
only those like Family Independence Temporary Assistance Program, which is
designed to last but a couple of consecutive years. Its theory is to motivate
parents to become more involved with their children’s education to improve
their performance.
Louisiana, like Tennessee, joins the majority of states (and
more keep getting added all of the time) in that there is some attempt to
tie school attendance to receiving such assistance. In order to qualify for Louisiana
FITAP, which only may go to families with children, if children are school-aged
the parent(s) must
assent to a Family Service Agreement document that, among others things,
provides penalties for truancy among those children, where truancy is defined
in public schools as being absent or excessively
tardy at least five times a term. On the first offense, the family is to
lose a month’s worth, one-twelfth, of FITAP benefits; a second draws another two
month’s worth and the third kicks them out of the program for a minimum of three
months.
But consider that the average benefit of a Louisiana recipient family
is $200, this means that even two violations in a year costs just $50 a month
spaced out. The real sting is by suspension of benefits for at least three
months. There are also sanctions on parents for truancy regardless of whether
they receive FITAP, and potentially on the children outside of school by suspension
of driving privileges. Therefore, whether this standard provides much
motivation presently is debatable, and likely in an aggregate sense will continue
to decline as have the number
of cases continues to fall in the state; at the
beginning of the fiscal year, only a little over 10,000 families received
FITAP.
Most tellingly, at the
beginning of the fiscal year, not a single case was terminated because of
violation of attendance policies. This can tell us any one of a few things: (1)
the policy really motivates attendance, (2) other factors related to truancy penalties,
such as the parental sanctions of community service, carry the load in
discouraging insufficient attendance, (3) program enforcement is too relaxed,
and/or (4) not the first but a combination of the second and third reasons. On
the whole, the evidence seems to be that the FITAP penalty does not seem to be
very significant in motivating attendance.
Now consider the assumption behind the truancy penalty – academic success
comes by being present. But being present and making an effort to succeed are
different things, and the theory of the inadequate performance penalty as forwarded
in the proposed Tennessee legislation is that insufficient effort is being made
to succeed, despite the dire warning no doubt regularly issued by schools that
the lack of a high school diploma will endanger seriously life prospects, and
thus greater parental involvement is needed.
Again, whether this kind of law would have a significant impact given
the environment involved is debatable. Given the creation of a welfare
underclass, now producing its fifth generation in the most extreme cases, where
parents have little education, all some can give is moral support.
Additionally, that kind of background and previous schooling in the case of
children not bright to begin with creates a small subset that simply are not
smart or prepared enough to pass enough classes, and would face a penalty
despite best efforts. Also, inadequate teaching can cause failure even with
good effort by students. Finally, there are those with the brains to avoid this
penalty but where lack of discipline in schools creates too much terror and/or
peer pressure against academic success for them to be able to concentrate on achieving
that success.
Yet issues that impede success, with the exception of incapable
students disproportionately likely to come from households that would qualify
for FITAP, are external to that idea and at least in part, such as the revamp
of teacher evaluation presently going on and implementation of
voucher-aided and other forms of school
choice, are being addressed that would remove unfairness from a program linking
academic performance to FITAP receipt. And the fact is that, despite increasing
rates of graduation and decreasing rates of dropping out, Louisiana still ranks
lowly among the states in that rate at just
above 70 percent. Statistics also suggest that the rate
is even lower among FITAP qualifiers.
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