History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
Why are we denying welfare moms an education?
- 04-06-2011
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Blog by Dana Goldstein/Lady Wonk
Diana Spatz was a San Francisco welfare mom working as a housecleaner when, in 1987, she enrolled in a community college program to learn basic word processing skills. Her modest hope was to increase her earning potential from $7 an hour to $15 an hour, so as to better provide for her 10-month old daughter, Eden. A few weeks after her classes began, Spatz was shocked when her caseworker cut off her welfare benefits and stopped returning her panicked phone calls. What happened? As Spatz recounted in a 1997 Nation magazine essay, her student financial aid was counted as income, and thus made her ineligible for the payments she relied on to meet her daughter’s needs. Twenty-four years later--and 15 years after the passage of welfare reform (TANF)--far too little has changed. As a new report from Legal Momentum makes clear, it remains extremely difficult for mothers on welfare to access the kind of education and training that lead to good jobs, the kind that pay a living wage and come with benefits such as paid sick leave and health insurance. The problem is the narrow definition of "work" according to TANF's "work first" requirement. (more...)
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