Education Next – Michael J. Petrilli
“This may seem like a ridiculous question. How can schools possibly persuade more adults to marry? And not have children out of wedlock? Fifty years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan himself decided it was inadvisable to offer solutions to problems afflicting the “Negro family.” Since then, our familial challenges have only grown deeper and wider, with 4 in 10 American babies now born to unwed mothers, including a majority of all children born to women in their 20s, and almost one-third of white babies. There are no obvious or easy prescriptions for reversing these trends. And why put this on the schools? One could argue that reducing teenage pregnancy is a reasonable job for our education system—and that if we could encourage girls to wait until they were in their 20s, and educated, to have babies, they might also wait for marriage. Well, teenage pregnancy rates are down 50 percent from their peak in 1990. High-school graduation rates are up, from 65 percent in the early 1990s to 80 percent today. Yet out-of-wedlock birth rates are as high as ever—we merely pushed early childbearing from the late teens to the early 20s. Now, the young adults who are having babies before marriage haven’t had any contact with the K–12 system for two years or more. Yet for educators and education policymakers to ignore the issue of marriage seems irresponsible. We tell ourselves that one of the great purposes of education reform is to lift poor children out of poverty. Today’s main strategy is to prepare many more low-income youngsters for college. According to the Pew Economic Mobility Project, 90 percent of low-income children who attain a four-year college degree escape the lowest income quintile as adults, versus just 53 percent of the non–degree holders. Put another way, individuals who grow up in low-income families are almost five times as likely to become low-income adults if they fail to complete a four-year college degree.”(more)