Teens Who Parent Still Need School

"It's a 24-hour job," Bristol Palin, young mom and newly anointed teen ambassador of the Candies Foundation, said on Good Morning America on May 6. "Your priorities completely change when you have a baby." Her life, she suggested, is consumed by caring for her baby and trying to finish high school.

But in Palin's recent television appearances, she didn't explain why school is so hard on teen parents, or why only one-third of adolescent mothers receive their diplomas.

The truth is, the nation with the highest adolescent pregnancy and birth rates in the industrialized world has not figured out how to meet the educational needs of pregnant and parenting teens.  In fact, we're going in the other direction - gutting the too-rare programs that have developed to meet the unique needs of teen parents.

In June, a two-year-old residential charter school for teen mothers in Washington, D.C., will shut its doors for good.  The City Council cited truancy, curricular problems, and gaps in special education services in revoking MEI Futures Academy's charter, and ignored the school's pleas to support improvement efforts. Because it is a residential school, the 50 students at MEI Futures Academy also must find a new place for themselves and their children to live.

Similar news came from Baltimore two weeks ago when the City Council voted to merge a school for pregnant and parenting teen mothers with an alternative program for boys. The reason? Cost cuts.

These moves follow New York City's decision to close its four "p-schools" in 2007 in favor of mainstreaming teen parents. A recent report from the New York Civil Liberties Union evaluating the consequences of this decision found that current services for teen parents are too few, too difficult to access, and too poorly advertised - to an embarrassing degree. The drop out rates for teen parents in New York schools are as high as 70 percent.

"We didn't think it was a problem when (the four p-schools closed) because they were really flawed - students weren't necessarily going to them voluntarily, and academically they were far from satisfactory," said Karyn Brownson, the NYCLU's teen health initiative director. "But when they closed, the Department of Education wasn't really prepared to replace and expand the services (to pregnant and parenting teens) in traditional schools."

Insufficient data about parenting students makes it difficult to evaluate existing programs. Beyond the abysmal retention of parenting students, Brownson said that the NYCLU has heard anecdotally about pregnant students being pressured out of school and into GED programs because it was "obvious they're not college-bound" and "they're supposedly a bad influence on other students."

Yet unequal access to education for parenting students is a violation of Title IX, said Lara Kaufmann, senior counsel with the National Women's Law Center. "A student's pregnancy, childbirth or termination of pregnancy are all specifically included in Title IX's protections against sex discrimination in publicly funded schools," Kaufmann explained.

But while Title IX is famous for its role in ensuring access to sports opportunities for girls, its protections for equal educational opportunities for parenting students are less well known and frequently violated.

"People are generally supportive of gender equity in sports, but many don't have the same sympathy for pregnant students," Kaufmann said. "There's still a stigma that pregnancy is their fault, that they should be punished, and there's a great myth that if you support pregnant students, it will make other teenagers want to get pregnant too."

This myth "defies common sense--young people aren't getting pregnant because their school gives them access to childcare," said Kaufmann. "And stigmatizing or discriminating against pregnant and parenting students is not only illegal, but it is bad educational policy because it increases the risk that those students will drop out."

While Title IX affirms the right of parenting students to equal education, very few legal cases have been filed to enforce these rights.

This is because, Kaufmann said, "it's really hard to bring a lawsuit, particularly if you are a teenager. Lawsuits are not only financially draining--and many of the girls we're talking about are from low-income families--but they also can be emotionally draining. ....  And it's also important to note that many pregnant and parenting teens are not even aware of their legal rights." 

Given that, Kaufmann added, it is "especially critical that the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights aggressively and proactively enforce the law in this area."

Not much of that is happening right now, however. There is nothing typical when it comes to the services that schools offer to pregnant and parenting teens because the vast majority of them do not offer any support at all, said Kaufmann.

But there are some schools that prove the possibilities - and the worth - of ensuring educational opportunities for young parents.

If we can escape the trap of taking anything we can get, it's worth looking at what, exactly, is working best in contemporary p-schools so that we can develop a strong foundation for advocacy in New York, in Baltimore, in Washington, D.C., and far beyond.

Catherine Ferguson Academy

Detroit's Catherine Ferguson Academy, a public high school for pregnant and parenting teen girls, is perhaps the shining star of a school system that's under emergency financial management. Despite the school district's struggles, CFA has won national recognition over its 20 years of operation for its educational innovations and high graduation rate.

CFA, which hosts up to 400 students (and 200 children) at a time, boasts a 90% graduation rate and a 100% college acceptance rate for students who earn diplomas. These numbers are superior even to many traditional high schools in Detroit.

"At first, I was a little bit skeptical--an all-girls school?--it's not going to work ... " said Evelyn Locke, a CFA senior, on a recent episode of Al Jazeera's Fault Lines. "But it's really not that bad."  Locke became pregnant in ninth grade; this year she's graduating and going on to study neo-natal nursing.

Ebony S. Griffin-Williams is a 1996 graduate of CFA who credits the school for helping her get a high school degree and become an IT analyst. "Before attending CFA my future was bleak. I was one of many of Detroit ... lost children... and I'm almost positive if I did not attend CFA I would have become a Teenage-Mother-High School-Drop-Out," wrote Griffin-Williams in an online review of the school. "CFA became my family. One of the most outstanding teaching methods taught to me by the loving staff of CFA was how important it is to have self-pride."

So what's helping these teen mothers to defy the statistics?

First of all, CFA takes a standard expectation for p-schools - free on-site day care - a step further and offers free early education classes, including kindergarten, to young children.  CFA‘s childcare staff extends its hours for students taking extra evening classes at a nearby community college.

The school offers a flexible schedule based on quarters over nine months and four-day weeks; this leaves teen mothers sufficient time to keep appointments and make up absences. Among the credits counted for graduation are parenting education classes, which allow the mothers to participate in activities alongside their children.

An on-site nursing and midwifery clinic offering pre- and post-natal support minimizes absences. It also facilitates access to Women, Infants, & Children (WiC), the federal program that offers supplemental foods to low-income parents.

Speaking of food: CFA has an on-site organic farm featuring vegetables, animals, and a student-built barn. The farm is maintained by students, volunteers, and science teacher Paul Weertz. The project began as Weertz's creative response to pregnant students who couldn't use chemicals in science class; rather than dissecting animals, the students created a living laboratory outdoors on vacant land that surrounded the school. Today the farm serves as an opportunity for science and construction education, healthful food served regularly in school, and activities for mothers and their children to share.

One of the greatest challenges p-schools face is a lack of public awareness about their existence; when school districts and the city don't consistently promote educational opportunities for pregnant and parenting teens, students who need those services are often unaware they exist, making drop-outs at traditional schools more likely.  CFA takes the lack of promotion into its own hands. This spring, the school hosted a citywide baby shower that drew nearly 100 young mothers and their children to the party. There, Principal Asenath Andrews encouraged them to enroll at Catherine Ferguson and make the possibilities of pursuing their education - even higher education - a reality.

And she did it with the spirit of celebration and possibility-not punishment. Andrews once told me about how other p-school programs she'd encountered were housed in the same building as programs for youth who were expelled or in trouble with the law. "You'd think they'd done something illegal," Andrews said.

Finally, and perhaps most uniquely, is that Catherine Ferguson Academy is able to offer students essential consistency. Rather than being a temporary "bridge" program that expects teen parents to move on to a traditional high school, students are eligible for enrollment at CFA from the time they become pregnant until the time they graduate.  New students register in August of each year on a first-come, first-serve basis; there is typically no waiting list.

Lund Family Center

The Lund Family Center in Vermont is not a school, but a 501c3 nonprofit and a multifaceted residential program for teen mothers. While its student body is primarily drawn from Vermont, Lund occasionally enrolls students from neighboring states. Lund's services come at no cost to students; its programming is funded by a diverse base, including the Vermont Department of Education, the Department of Human Services, private donations, and school districts that direct students to Lund.

Among its many services is an education program tailored to the needs of each student. Lund's New Horizons Educational Program is approved by the Vermont's Department of Education and serves about 35 students a year on a rolling admission (some in-residence, others as day students) through an ongoing school year. On staff in the classroom are three certified teachers, a part-time tutor and a classroom assistant that work directly with students.

Of the teens that Lund serves, about 50% had previously dropped out of school and some are coming out of the corrections system. They are between the ages of 12 and 27, thereby serving a wider range of students than CFA is able to, though not nearly as many of them.

"(We) ... can provide transitional services to assist a student mother in returning to her high school, or continue to educate the mom until she obtains a diploma from her high school," Kris Hoffman, the educational services coordinator, explained. "We develop educational plans one at a time for each student, and have achieved great success in this model, although it is very labor intensive for our teachers."

Hoffman is clear that p-schools can't skimp on resources if they expect to be successful. From access to diaper-changing, breastfeeding and milk-pumping, as well as frequent breaks and appropriate maternity leave, Hoffman emphasized that adolescent student mothers need flexibility. "Our teachers can teach three kinds of math in the same room while holding a baby," said Kitty Bartlett, Lund's communications and development coordinator.

While CFA offers students long-term stability in their hometown, easing the obstacles towards graduation, Lund's residential model gives students a safe space away from their native cities. "The common misconception is that the early pregnancy is the only issue facing the student mother," Hoffman said.  But according to Bartlett, most student mothers at Lund have a "history of poverty, a pretty significant history of trauma, and often mental illness, medical, and substance abuse issues." Hoffman contends that the gender-specific environment helps the center to work with multiple issues simultaneously.

The program offers "maternity leave, post-secondary educational counseling, referral to substance abuse and mental health treatment, free lunch and snacks, and peer support," said Hoffman.

Lund makes a commitment to the children of its residents and day-school students, offering childcare even after the teen parents transition out of the program if it makes sense for the child. It also helps teens find quality preschools for their children in the town they return to.

Finally, Lund tries hard to help young mothers be teenagers as much as possible and appropriate. "We've seen that not supporting this developmental phase [of being a teenager] is detrimental to the vulnerable families with which we work," Hoffman said. "Adolescence is a time of growth and change, and simply treating teen moms as adults does not help them to move forward toward independence."

Some in the teen pregnancy prevention movement are suspicious of programs for adolescent parents, believing that they serve as an enticement to pregnancy.  Hoffman argues that it's important to overlay such programs with traditional environments, particularly for very young mothers.

"I've noticed that really young mothers, aged 12-15, become almost institutionalized when they remain in teen parent education programs for their entire secondary school careers, and might continue to feel entitled to public assistance and community involvement if they do not move on to a different academic setting," she said.  "However, if educational support is provided in a teen parent ed model for these youngest mothers during the year that they are working on pregnancy and childbirth, return to traditional high school can be very productive."

White River Online

For adolescent student parents without access to a p-school, online education is an option to continue schooling. As an alternative program of the White River School District in Buckley, Washington, White River Online serves just over 60 full-time students between the ages of 12-21 with a standard high school curriculum. It issues diplomas and hosts an annual graduation ceremony.

While it is not a program specifically targeting pregnant and parenting teens, its flexible schedule and accessibility make it a viable choice for them. Danielle McIntosh, a White River Online teacher, estimates that at least 10% of White River's students are pregnant or parenting, though the only way the school knows if its students are parents is if they tell them about it.

If they do so, White River Online is willing to work with them and their unique circumstances. "I would say we unofficially cut them some slack that we probably wouldn't extent to other students," said McIntosh. "For example, a parenting student recently had a sick baby. Just a cold, but nap times were disrupted so work times were also disrupted. We just extended her deadlines to meet the situation."

Ensuring Fair and Equal Access to Education

School districts and cities that ignore the needs of pregnant and parenting students would do well to observe that proven, workable p-school models exist. Therefore, doing anything less than making these models standard and accessible is at best ill-informed and at worst cruel. Not to mention bordering on illegal - teenagers have a legal right to public education, no matter what their parenting status is.

That translates into a requirement for schools to adapt their policies for unexcused absences, make-up work, doctor's notes, home instruction, transportation, individualized graduation plans, counseling, and class scheduling for the needs of pregnant and parenting teens - without steering them into inferior or academically lax programs.

"I don't think there's one right answer (for how to support the educational success of parenting students), in terms of whether programs in traditional schools or separate settings are better," said NWLC's Lara Kaufmann, while emphasizing that significantly more research and data is needed in this area.

"We know of promising examples following both models," Kaufmann added. "What this tells us is that there is more than one way to provide the necessary supports, and that's encouraging. As long as they comply with the law, schools can be creative about how they help their parenting students. The important thing is the substance, not the form."

Whether it's a four-year high school, a multifaceted residential facility or an accredited online program, the goal should be to provide several viable options for students to meet their various needs. While some students need the stability and peer-experience of attending a comprehensive school like Catherine Ferguson Academy in their hometowns, others might not find this to be the best option.

When it comes to p-schools, Hoffman has a request: "If you have these programs in your areas, please help teens and tweens to see them!"

The thing is, there should be no "if" -- these programs need to be in all of our areas. To paraphrase the NYCLU, not just one but two lives depend on it.