Reply to 6 Baltimore public schools where not a single student tested "proficient"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If you are an older teen who has grown up in a welfare household, and you live in a neighborhood with lots of other families similar to yours, you begin to realize as you move towards adulthood, that even if you get a HS diploma, your chances of finding a job that pays enough to support you to move out is limited. Even if you find such a job, finding and paying for housing can be difficult. You want to stay close to family and friends but all he housing near them is subsidized so you can't just rent it on your own and even if you could, you want to get away from the crappy neighborhood you grew up in. But the housing that is nicer and still somewhat close is more expensive, much more so than your minimum wage job will pay. So then you think you can get 2 jobs or maybe 3 but really most almost young adults do not relish the idea of working 3 jobs.

You look around you and you talk to friends. Those with babies get housing vouchers sometimes for those real nice apartments, medical care, food, maybe school for themselves or job training, free christmas gifts, free clothes for the kids, free food bank food, all of those freebies your friends tell you free up what money you do make by babysitting or some other under the table job to pay for your hair and nails and phone and then the baby daddy will also give you money sometimes.

So as a young adult women who has grown up watching everyone in their family and everyone around them living off the system and then faces these 2 choices, which of these looks like the better option?[/quote]

Where do you live that there is such a thing as "a welfare household", where people get housing vouchers for "real nice apartments"?

First, by federal law since 1996, you can only get TANF for 60 months or 5 years in your life time. https://www.dol.gov/wb/info_about_wb/regions/tanfmd.htm

In 2015, out of every 100 poor families with children, only 27 received cash assistance from the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program. http://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/tanf_spending_md.pdf

In Maryland, the maximum TANF benefit for a family of 3 in Maryland is $636 per month (38% of the federal poverty level, which is $1,680 per month, or $20,160 per year). Maximum TANF plus maximum SNAP (food stamps) together gets a household of 3 to 66% of the poverty level. Maximum TANF covers 46% of fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment. http://www.cbpp.org/research/family-income-support/tanf-cash-benefits-have-fallen-by-more-than-20-percent-in-most-states

And as for housing, only 34% of poor households receive rental assistance; for every assisted household in Maryland, twice as many low-income households are homeless or pay more than half their income for rent and do not receive any federal rental assistance due to limited funding. http://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/4-13-11hous-MD.pdf And half of the families with children who receive rental assistance (keeping in mind that most don't) in Baltimore live in substandard housing. http://www.urban.org/research/publication/low-end-rental-housing/view/full_report In 2014, 129 children in Baltimore were diagnosed with lead poisoning due to housing: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/investigations/bs-md-lead-poisoning-gaps-20151213-story.html

Nobody is leading a plush life on public assistance.[/quote]

Nobody is saying they are leading a 'plush life'.  We're making the point that these girls have a choice to make.  Remain childless and work crappy minimum wage jobs for years, try to attend college which they are often poorly prepared for.  Or pop out a few babies and receive some decent enough public assistance.

These are teen girls looking at their immediate future who have already been living in poverty.

Somehow, make it more lucrative for them NOT to have kids.

It needs to be acknowledged that having additional babies, when you cannot support the ones that you already have, is not a good decision.  You don't seem to think that is at all part of the problem, but really, it is.  We're making it harder for poor teen girls to make the decision not to get pregnant when the alternative looks more inviting.  We didn't even discuss the social capital that comes from giving birth to Larlo's baby.  [/quote]

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