Flunking For Welfare

Suddenly, a couple months before graduation, about ten kids I teach – kids who were passing and were bound to graduate high school – just completely stopped coming to school. I made calls home, left messages and notified the office.

The kids continued to not show. I talked to a few parents, saying, “I want your kid to pass. You just need to get them to come to class and get their make up work and sit in on a couple after school sessions.”

Even I, who tries to pass every kid in order to avoid completely dealing with a central office and administration that wants teachers to prove they’ve “diligently” made every single effort to help and contact dysfunctional students from dysfunctional families, can’t pass these kids. In this district, the lowest possible grade a teacher can give out is a 50%, even if a kid has never come to school at all. A 60% is passing here – you do the math! It’s not very hard to “pass.” But these few kids have literally done nothing to try and pass. And there’s nothing wrong with them; no sickness, tragedies – nothing. So, I asked my principal – “what gives?”

Her hypothesis, based on decades in this dysfunctional city school system was simple and disturbing: Many parents fear their kids’ graduation because it takes away a substantial part of the income on their government benefit checks once their dependent is out of high school – off the government’s books – and on their own. She said she’s seen it time and again in her career.

“So you’re saying these parents want their kids to fail high school?” I asked.

“Sure, as long as the child is in high school in some form, the parent continues to receive government money for them on their check,” she said.

And it’s true. This, according to the official website of social security:

If your child is a student

Three months before your child's 18th birthday, we will send you a notice that benefits will end at age 18 unless your child is a full-time student at a secondary (or elementary) school. If your child is younger than 19 and still attending a secondary or elementary school, he or she must notify us by completing a statement of attendance that has been certified by a school official. The benefits then will usually continue until he or she graduates, or until two months after reaching age 19, whichever comes first.

Maybe this isn’t news to you, but it’s sickening to think that kids might be held back because parents fear losing their government dole money. Recently, a female student who had disappeared from my class for about two months came back demanding all the make-up work from the quarter. She relayed a seemingly far-fetched story about how she has been in New York City suing her mother for not providing material support that is supposed to come as a result of the welfare benefit the mother receives for this child. This isn’t a “the dog ate my homework” type of excuse. It’s hard for me to believe that a young girl would have to sue her own mother, but also hard to discount after working in this system for two years. The girl says she hasn’t been eating much and sleeps at different friends’ houses. The girl can’t read fluently and her writing is nearly unreadable. She is emotionally distraught and unhealthy. I don’t have enough skills to give her all she needs and I don’t know who does. Her story panned out with the social worker at our school, so I know she wasn’t lying, but I don’t know what kind of program could help her. Her parents have abandoned her.

Our city has a relatively new superintendent who has made it a goal to get dropouts back in classrooms regardless of the cost or their age. My school and others like it, as a result, are stocked with 18 year-old high school freshmen who have sometimes been out of school and on the streets for years. What kind of example does that set for the kids who are actually on grade level?

At what point does the public dole run out for people who SCORN the free education the state provides them?

Stringent student attendance laws should be tied to parent’s welfare benefits if taxpayers are really to pay into a system that is abused by this ingrained social dysfunction. There’s no reason for parents to be getting welfare benefits because their kid has failed; most likely, it’s more the parent’s failure than it is the child’s. Meanwhile, schools fall apart because of dependent communities that have fallen apart. Teachers and administrators, usually not even from these communities, can only do so much.

Teachers can put F’s on kid’s report cards forever. Some parents, however, see the F and then wait for the check in the mail for as long as it will come.