Dropping out of school leaves people vulnerable to poverty and unable to find
livable-wage jobs.
By Bill Engle
Staff writer
Photo
On the Job: Dora Robison, a mother of six, gives a customer change at Ryan's
Steak House on the east side of Richmond.
Photo
I Love You Mommy: Dora Robison receives a hug from her 3-year-old son, Joshua,
while recently shopping at Wal-Mart in Richmond.
About this Series
In a six-month special report, the Palladium-Item is examining poverty, its
causes and consequences in Richmond, Wayne County and the greater Whitewater
Valley.
Today's segment, part two of the series, focuses on poverty and its link to
education. The report kicked off May 18 with an overview of poverty and its
impact.
Coming Next
July 27: Poverty and its consequences on health and health care.
August 31: Poverty and its impact on housing.
September 28: Poverty and its costs, including crime.
October 26: Poverty and overcoming it.
The doors of opportunity slammed shut early for Dora Robison.
She didn't know it at the time, but those doors were first slammed in her face
when, as a 16-year-old girl, she dropped out of high school after her parents
split. She moved with her mother and brothers from Dayton, Ohio, to Richmond.
Within a year she became pregnant, and since then she has spent her life
job-hopping a series of low-paying jobs. During one two-year period she worked
three minimum wage jobs.
Never, she says, has she worked a job that paid her a living wage.
Today, the 36-year-old Richmond woman is close to fulfilling a dream of earning
her high school equivalency diploma. Her life, she says, depends on it.
"I'm not sure that anybody understands how I feel,'' Robison said. "But, to me,
an education represents freedom, the freedom to walk into a place and get a good
job.
"All my life I've felt like doors have been closed to anybody who doesn't have
an education,'' she said. "I'm tired of doors being close. I'm tired of being
turned away.''
Numbers are growing
Robison is one of a growing number of people who are underemployed and
struggling to make a living in the Wayne County area. They wait on us in
restaurants, stock shelves for us in discount stores and clean our rooms in
hotels.
Their common link is they are living at or near poverty. They are trying to
raise families working jobs that barely pay enough for them alone to live. Many
work the jobs they do because they don't have an education.
High school is just a distant unpleasant memory. Never have they dreamed of
college.
In a community where most experts say one in three people are living at or near
poverty, their numbers are growing and so is their impact on the community. That
impact is felt in city neighborhoods and rural areas, in the community's health
care system, in its criminal justice and social service systems and in its
business and industry.
It also hits our schools.
"It affects everything, everyone's life whether you have a large income or
not,'' said Lou Anna Moore, principal at Fairview Elementary School in Richmond.
"When you go to a restaurant it affects the level of service you get. When you
go to the auto repair shop it affects whether the worker can figure out your car
computer or not.''
The impact on local schools is clear. Area schools spend extra money on programs
to prevent dropouts and teen pregnancy. They spend millions of dollars on
remedial classes.
Still, many adults can't read. Some of the area's workforce is unskilled and
unprepared for an ever-changing economy.
It is a national problem, of course, but many local people say the impact of an
under-educated workforce is like an albatross around the area's neck.
"We need to attract the medical, bio-technical and just technology industries to
this area,'' said Frank Mazzei, president of the Richmond-Wayne County Chamber
of Commerce. "That has become part of our focus. But if we don't improve the
educational attainment of our students we won't attract a technology-driven
economy. It will be easier for them to locate somewhere else.
"And that means the number of people living at or near poverty will increase in
the future,'' Mazzei said.
Some who are unemployed or underemployed turn to crime, their dreams of success
overshadowed by hopes of survival.
"That's why we're building a new jail,'' said Debbie Yates, an adult and
alternative education teacher at the FIND Center in Richmond, the home for
Richmond Community Schools' adult and alternative education programs.
"We have people come here who can't fill out the Hill's Pet Nutrition
application because they can't do the math,'' she said. "Their job choices are
very limited.''
Predicting failure
Studies have shown that poverty's impact on education is dramatic.
Dr. Richard Hofmann, a professor of educational leadership at Miami University
in Oxford, Ohio, has studied the role and effects of poverty on school district
performance for eight years. Hofmann studied most of the 607 school districts in
Ohio using 12 years of data.
His findings, he says, are unequivocal.
"Higher poverty schools have substantially lower pass rates,'' he said. "What I
have found is the failure rates are a function of the poverty level of the
school. We can now predict failure rates by knowing the poverty levels of the
school district.''
Children from low-income homes, he said, often come to school years behind
developmentally and struggle to catch up. Some never do. Their families often
move three and four times during their elementary school years because of
marital splits or because parents are seeking a better living situation.
When children get to high school they are on the outside looking in.
Hofmann calls it "social dissonance.''
"My sense is that children from poverty come from a very different culture than
other children,'' he said. "They dress differently. They have different values.
They have a different dialect. They have different heroes.
"Teachers also come from a different culture,'' Hofmann said. "It's
uncomfortable for the students and uncomfortable for the teachers. Sometimes
they don't make a link, which makes learning that much more difficult.
"By the time they get to high school these students are hardened against the
system,'' Hofmann said. "They probably haven't adapted, and they realize they
don't fit in. They may fail. They may drop out. It's a very tough situation.''
Many can't read or do math. Their job skills are limited. There is no escape.
"We have students coming to us who have third- and fourth-grade reading levels
and they're 16 and 17 years old,'' Yates said. "I would imagine many of them are
living at or near poverty. Their future is they go from one dead end job to
another.
"That's why the FIND Center programs are so important,'' Yates said. "We give
everyone who comes through our doors a chance.''
Income level vs. education
But educators are quick to point out that income levels have little to do with
intelligence. Children from low-income homes are often bright and eager to
learn. But they come from different environments. They may come to school for a
hot meal, for medical care or to be with people who care about them.
"Poverty rarely has a direct link to one's lack of ability or lack of
intelligence,'' FIND Center Director Cheryl Amos said. "What I see in poverty is
a lack of resources. We give people resources. One of the greatest reasons we
are successful is we establish a relationship of trust and respect with the
people who come here.''
Hofmann said there is a difference between education and tests of learning and
achievement.
"You cannot blame the teachers. And blaming the parents does not help,'' he
said. "They don't know how to advocate for their children. You need community
involvement. You need to inform parents, educate them. When that happens they
begin to talk to each other and there is cumulative affect.''
But many experts say learning begins before birth.
National studies indicate that parents who read to their children and expose
them to a variety of educational opportunities long before preschool and
kindergarten give them a giant boost toward becoming successful students.
Yet in many households, parents, who never had support or encouragement from
their own parents, may be indifferent to their children's learning needs. In
other households, parents work long hours for low pay.
Parents should read to their children at least 20 minutes each night. But what
if the parent can't read or doesn't have 20 minutes each night to read?
The result is the child goes to kindergarten two to three years behind
developmentally. The child is more focused on survival than on learning.
"When you are starving you don't have the mental or spiritual resources to focus
on learning,'' said Cliff McNish, director of the 21st Century Scholar program.
"That's a problem for many children. And it starts years before. A child's brain
is developing when it's in its mother's womb.
"If you're 15 years old and you're pregnant, you might be starving and you're
starving that child,'' McNish said. "You may not know how to raise a child and
you're doing things to that child that will impact them. You're impacting their
future.''
The 21st Century Scholars program offers scholarships to state colleges,
universities, technical and trade schools to low-income students who take a
pledge to stay drug and alcohol free, to not commit crimes and to graduate from
an accredited Indiana high school.
McNish said the program has been successful but said "there is still a lot of
work to be done to reach the students who need our help."
School districts must pay more to educate students who are behind
developmentally.
Richmond High School Principal Sharon Puckett estimates it costs almost twice as
much to help a student catch up as it does to teach the student at grade level.
She said of the high school's more than $8 million budget in 2001-2002, about
$1.5 million was spent on remedial classes.
"Many of those are students living at or near poverty,'' Puckett said. "You have
to lower your class size. And you have to give them a double dose of work. For
instance, they take English and an English remediation class.''
Attendance a key
Richmond High School has targeted improving both graduation and attendance
rates.
"But that," as Puckett says, "is a work in progress.''
"The verdict is out,'' she said. "We're still struggling with the attitude that
some parents and students have that (the students) don't have to come to school
every day.''
Hofmann said it's good that the district is targeting attendance rates.
"Attendance is as good an example of a successful school as are good test
scores,'' he said. "It often indicates that children want to be there.''
That's what Moore has done at Fairview Elementary.
"What she has done there has been incredible,'' Hofmann said. "She knows almost
every child by name. She pays close attention to attendance. You see less
vandalism. The children are not rude. She has built a community school by
involving parents, communicating with parents.''
Many of Fairview's families are working class. Some are working poor families,
and others are families living in poverty.
"We have some phenomenal parents here,'' Moore said. "When the (flu) virus hit
us last January and February we had 50 and 60 students per day out of school. I
sent a letter home asking parents for their help in making sure students (that)
if they could be here were here.
"We had 90 students, or almost 40 percent, with perfect attendance in May,'' she
said. "That's way above the norm.''
A constant struggle
The good news is that the Richmond school district is addressing its dropout
rate. It has been a priority of the high school's staff, particularly since
Puckett has been principal.
But reading scores continue to be a challenge.
Puckett said that in the fall of 2002, 56 percent of the ninth graders entering
Richmond High School read at their grade level.
"That tells you that you have a whole group of kids who need extra help,'' she
said. "How do you do math and English and science if you can't read at grade
level?"
Despite what Robison says about life without a high school diploma, students
still drop out.
As the school year wound down in May, Puckett got a call in her office. A
ninth-grade student was in the office with his parents planning to drop out of
school.
The parents had a family crisis and had to leave town. They didn't want to leave
the student behind to finish the year and wouldn't bring him back to take
finals.
Puckett was in shock. Six days were left in the school year and the student was
passing the majority of his classes.
Puckett argued, cajoled and bargained but couldn't get the student, or the
parents, to change their minds.
Later, she sat stunned.
"I could scream. I really could,'' she said. "We just didn't want to lose him. I
asked him, 'What are you going to do?'
"I don't know,'' said the student.
"What are you going to do when you're 25?'' she asked.
"I don't know,'' the student repeated. Then after considering, the student said,
"But I have a girlfriend."
Life at a standstill
For Dora Robison, learning has never been easy. She was diagnosed with a
learning disability in the sixth grade and has struggled to get her high school
equivalency. She hopes that will happen this fall.
Within a year after dropping out of school, she became pregnant and has worked a
series of low-paying jobs, entrusting her children to family members in her
absence.
Now she has six children and has been married for 11 years. Her oldest son has
graduated from high school and recently finished his first year at Ivy Tech
State College.
Another son is on pace to graduate from Richmond High School in May 2004.
She wants them to have the chance she did not have.
"I've worked and worked thinking, 'I'll do this until something better comes
along.' The only problem is that nothing better came along,'' she said.
In 1990 and '91 she worked two fast food jobs and one at a temporary service.
"I'd come home sweaty and tired,'' she said. "My feet hurt, and I had just
enough energy to eat dinner and go to bed and get up and start it all over again
the next day.''
"One job helped pay the bills. One job paid for the baby sitter and the third
check was for me and my kids to buy groceries,'' she said. "When all was said
and done I had about $40 to put gas in my car and anything else and that had to
last for two weeks.''
Robison has passed all five GED sub-tests, but she has to raise her overall
average to get her diploma. She plans to retest in November in social studies
and science.
If she receives her diploma, it will be a day that will change her life, she
predicts.
"Of course it will,'' she said. "Anybody who doesn't think that is sadly
mistaken. These kids who drop out of school and don't think they need that
education are just wrong. They just don't know.''
"I'm doing this so I can go ahead and finish my life,'' she said. "So I can go
on to college. I feel like my life has been at a standstill."
Ultimately, she plans to go to Ivy Tech State College and study to become a
medical transcriptionist.
She was on welfare and received food stamps for a time in the 1990s. She vows
never to go back.
"Some people get on welfare and make a life out of that,'' she said. "But that's
not for me. I can't live that way.''
Originally published Sunday, June 29, 2003