Years ago, when Angel Del Cid and his wife first started their family, they decided to rely solely on his income as a chauffeur so that she could stay home and take care of their two children throughout their school years. “She was very active to make sure our kids were getting the attention they needed to get a good education,” Angel Del Cid says. Their decision paid off: In the fall, the Del Cids’ older child was accepted at a local community college near their home in the Southern California working-class city of Bell Gardens. But now the family faces a painful problem: “Our income is too high to qualify for financial aid,” Del Cid says, “but not high enough for us to actually have the money to pay the tuition.”
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. The goal of the public education system is to equip our children with the skills they need to succeed. It enables them to learn about our country and the world and develop skills that will form the foundation of their working and civic lives. It nurtures their innate curiosity and inspires them to love learning itself.
Beginning in early childhood, education prepares our youth for a lifetime of learning. Each additional level of scholastic attainment makes a significant difference in the wages our children will earn as adults, so access to and affordability of two- and four-year publicly financed colleges help our children tap into the opportunities for financial security that postsecondary education can provide.
Yet, we are not investing nearly enough, especially for those children in most need. In many of our communities, where jobs and affordable housing are in short supply, where basic healthcare is scarce and local property tax revenues are strained, our public school systems are often lacking. Dilapidated school buildings, inexperienced teachers, and lack of or out-of-date textbooks and computers signal that funding is scarce.
In 2005, school districts with the highest number of poor students received $938 less per pupil than districts with the lowest concentration of poor students. Many students suffer because of sub-par schooling, and many respond to inadequate schooling by leaving school: In 2005, more than 10 percent of Blacks and 22 percent of Latinos between the ages of 16 and 24 were high school dropouts, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.
We seek increased accountability in public education and early education. We, as parents, must be involved in school decisions and in our children’s education. We urge reform in the way our children are taught so that their skills fit society’s needs. We seek schools that offer bilingual education and culturally relevant curricula for students. Our teenagers crave more recreation, sports, tutoring, literacy and cultural history resources when they get to high school. Technology access and readiness are crucial for all students, regardless of wealth.
Teachers are better able to meet the needs of all students when classes are smaller.
Parents and teachers must come together to work on the best education strategies for our children. Local school districts must provide carefully monitored options for school autonomy to allow our communities to create innovative programs that meet our children’s needs.
Helping students think about and plan for their future early on will help ensure their success. School districts can help our children by offering career counseling and preparation programs. Parents and children need to know – preferably by sixth grade – the math, science and language classes required for different career paths so that the children can begin the foundation classes in junior high. Increased counseling services would increase students’ access to career opportunities, and internships and apprenticeships would provide our children with meaningful work experience.
Comprehensive sex education would benefit all students.
Strong drug and alcohol abuse prevention programs would help students and their families address what might otherwise become a crippling challenge.
We urge states to provide adequate school funding regardless of local property values.We call for (1) an end to the practice of outsourcing public school education to for-profit contractors, (2) restrictions on outsourcing to private, nonprofit organizations and (3) regulations that ensure transparency and accountability to our communities.
We support the creation of “Grow Our Own Teacher” programs that offer tuition and other supports to low-income family members, as well as to community activists, to attend state teaching colleges to become fully certified teachers. Such programs attract teachers who are deeply committed to working in our communities and to staying in hard-to-staff schools. State programs can also support “community schools” that provide basic health, dental and vision screening to all our students and offer extended school-day services to surrounding communities.
We urge the replacement of so-called zero-tolerance policies – which criminalize and demoralize our young people – with disciplinary models based on positive behavioral supports.
States help low- and moderate-income children attend postsecondary schools through direct funding to public four-year colleges and universities, and financial support to two-year and community colleges. In addition, many states provide financial aid to our children through grants that can supplement federal scholarships. But as state support declines or fails to keep up with rising costs, the costs passed on to our children through tuition increases and fees push public higher education out of reach. We urge strengthened support for postsecondary education and for financial aid for students from low- and moderate-income families.
Those of us in low-income communities seek a new role for the federal government in education, one that strengthens and supports teachers and provides resources so that our schools can provide high-quality programming and services for our children. We seek a federal role that encourages respect for and engagement of families and teachers at education decision-making tables as partners in our children’s success.
We urge adoption of a program that recruits and supports parents and other stakeholders in communities of color to become fully certified teachers. Attracting new candidates from our communities into teacher-training programs will help build a profession that is responsive to our needs.
We are deeply concerned about federal grants programs that divert education dollars to private programs, such as school vouchers and charter schools, at the expense of public school systems. The focus must be on strengthening our public schools so that all children have access to a quality education.
At a time when the cost of college tuition is escalating, the Pell Grant Program, the main federal grant program designed to help low-income students pay for college, is providing a smaller and smaller share of assistance. Our children – and the adults among us who are returning to school – are taking on more and more debt to attend college. On average, students graduating from four-year colleges owe nearly $20,000. The Pell Grant covers less than $4,500. Funding for Pell Grants should be substantially increased, and financial aid rules should be modified to recognize the needs of our working adults who return to school.
The federal government provides funding for two programs – Gear-Up and TRIO – that help our low-income students succeed in college. Services available through high schools and at colleges are designed to serve both our young people making the transition from high school and the older adults among us who go back to college. A better-educated nation is a better nation. We seek strengthened support for Gear-Up and TRIO.
Some federal funding is available to help us improve our English-language skills if English isn’t our first language. Additional funding would help those programs reach deeper into our communities. In addition, we seek an expansion of funding for innovative programs designed to help us as workers enhance our basic skills and qualify for postsecondary education. With better skills, we will be better able to provide for our families.
Given the high level of school-loan debt many of our graduating students carry, we seek to have student loan programs reformed to cap loan repayment schedules at a reasonable percentage of the borrower’s income.