The Value of Adult Education

Editor's note: The following is an adapted excerpt from an op-ed piece I wrote for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette a few years ago. While it talks about Arkansas, the story is true for every state in the Union.

With all the pomp and circumstance of high school graduation almost upon us, we may forget those students who did not graduate.

The sad reality is that, even with the job market demanding advanced levels of education, at least one out of every five high school students who should be graduating this spring has dropped out. Their reasons are as varied as they are – family situations, illness, an undiagnosed learning disability, lack of basic academic skills, personal problems, boredom, unrealistic dreams, poor choices.

When they drop out, these students condemn themselves, and their future families, to a second-class life. Today’s college graduate will make $1 million more over a lifetime than a high school graduate, but the dropout, averaging less than $19,000 a year, won’t even make $1 million in a lifetime.

The number of adults who do not have a high school education is growing. In Arkansas alone, nearly a half-million residents over 18 have not finished high school. More than 170,000 of those don’t even have an eighth-grade education. And thousands more do not have the basic educational skills needed to be successful in today’s workplace.

Why should the rest of us care?

By addressing these needs, adult education increases the earning (and spending) power of these adults, which then comes back to the state through higher income and sales taxes. It also reduces the amount of public money -- your tax dollars -- that must be spent on welfare.

But instead of investing in adult education and workforce training, most states, and the federal government, continue to feed the welfare system. Arkansas is the only state that provides adults a free second chance at getting a high school education. While other states charge for GED classes and tests, about 6,500 Arkansans -- including prisoners -- receive their high school diploma by passing the free GED tests each year.

Under Gov. Mike Huckabee, the state went a step further by offering its residents on welfare free tuition to a two-year college and help with childcare and transportation. It was a win-win situation for the families and the state.

Real Solutions for Real People -- Education, Part 2

It shouldn't take a Ph.D. in education to understand why parental influence is more important to a child's academic success than any billion-dollar government program.

For one thing, most parents know their children better than any teacher could. They know what interests their children, what motivates them, what discourages them. They know their children's dreams as well as their limitations.

Educated parents who understand the importance of education will encourage their children to learn -- not just in school but from life itself. They will be there to teach their children, to guide them through homework assignments the kids don't understand, to explain difficult concepts in ways the teachers couldn't. They will whet their children's appetite for learning by reading and discussing books with them, by taking them to museums and historic sites, by watching and discussing television with them, etc.

The flip side is the parent who has limited education and doesn't understand the importance of a high school diploma, much less a college degree. They can't help their children with difficult homework assignments, putting their children at a disadvantage. If the parents have limited English abilities, they can't talk to their children's teachers or read the notes about registering their children for extracurricular activities that could ignite their children's interest in education.

I'm reminded of Roy, a Hispanic teenager I knew years ago. Even though his parents weren't truly migrants, Roy grew up in the federal migrant education program and participated in several other well-intentioned government education projects aimed at ethnic students. Roy wanted to be the first in his family to graduate from high school. He even started to think he could go to college. But when Roy turned 16, his father, a dropout himself, literally browbeat him into leaving school. The father told Roy repeatedly, "You're nothing but a dumb Mexican, and that's all you're ever going to be." Eventually, Roy believed his dad, dropped out of school and began working in the fields, giving his paycheck to his dad. Roy got married young, had children young and ended up in jail -- young.

In Roy's case, the influence of his father far outweighed any positive feedback he got from government education programs. Had the government wanted to save Roy, it should have focused on educating his father instead.

More on that tomorrow.

Real Solutions for Real People -- Education, Part I

Part of President Obama's spending plan includes $2.2 billion more for Head Start programs. Citing studies that show Head Start helps close the learning gap for children from low-income families, educators and politicans tout the program as a progressive way to improve educational opportunities for minorities and level the academic playing field.

Head Start began in 1964 as part of President Johnson's Great Society program. Although it has been around for nearly half a century, the program -- which last year had a federal budget of nearly $7 billion -- has made little dent in graduation rates, test scores and college attendance for low-income children. In fact, high school drop-out rates are actually increasing.

Why?

What the educators and politicians don't tell you is that the same studies have shown that the progress Head Start students achieve disappears by the time they reach junior high school. In fact, other national education programs -- like Jobs for America's Graduates, a program for high school students at risk of dropping out -- have found the biggest barrier to a kid's academic achievement is a parent who didn't graduate.

In other words, family values are more of a determining factor in a child's education than any multibillion dollar federal program.

So perhaps we've been approaching this problem backwards. Rather than pouring more and more money into Head Start, we should put that money into adult education programs in an effort to educate the parents and help them become the role models their children will follow.