8883
Welfare-to-work and adult education
Jeff Zacharakis-Jutz, Northern Illinois University
Abstract
Adult education is central to recent welfare reform initiatives throughout the United States. Using Illinois’ Project Chance as a case study, this research demonstrates how education has failed to address essential problems of welfare and poverty, and questions the role of adult educators in addressing these educational problems.
Welfare reform
There is a wave of anticipation for welfare reform in the USA among both liberal and conservative politicians. Education is central to almost every reform proposal. New York Senator Daniel P. Moynihan’s Jobs Opportunity and Basic Skills proposal advocates educational support to help the poor rise out of poverty[1]. In Illinois, ‘Project Chance (PC) is not a make-work programme,’ declared Governor James P. Thompson. ‘We are going to see to it that people on welfare acquire the education and skills they need to compete in the job market and achieve independence’[2].
Illinois has nearly 40 years of experience in welfare-to-work programmes, dating back to 1949 when local governments were first given authority to create work and training programmes. Since then there have been numerous work incentive programmes[3].
Hence, I was not surprised when a friend said, ‘I know a lot but am a master of none. I’ve gone to a lot of classes and am even certified as an Emergency Medical Technician. But I can’t get a job. I went through the two week PC orientation. It was a waste of time. I quit, and I’m still on welfare’[4].
Unfortunately, nowhere in the United States’ adult education literature is there policy analysis of education’s role in government welfare-to-work programmes. Yet, the impact and importance to the field of adult education are immense. PC alone will create more than 20,000 new student placements in Illinois in ABE (adult basic education), GED (general education diploma), and short-term skill training and certificate programmes[5].
Project Chance: PC is a welfare-to-work programme which is mandatory for any adult who receives public assistance, does not have children under six years old, is not physically or mentally handicapped, or homeless, or chemically dependent. Once enrolled in PC, participants engage in a two month job search where they are required to make a certain number of job contacts per week. During this initial stage, participants are given no special training. If they do not find a job they are given a full assessment to determine what prevented them from succeeding in this independent job search. Possible reasons range from personal problems such as drug addiction and depression to skill deficiencies. Caseworkers then determine which component the participant will be assigned to. For example, those who cannot read or lack a high school diploma are assigned to a GED or ABE class. There are various options available, all requiring a caseworker referral. The guiding policy PC has set for its caseworkers is, ‘the programme selected will make the client employable in the shortest amount of time and at the least cost to the Department’[6].
Research approach
In The New American Poverty, political scientist Michael Harrington[7] describes the impersonal ‘structures of misery’ which suppress the growing number of America’s poor. Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward have identified these structures to be rooted in a capitalist economy where welfare serves to placate and reduce crime among the poor, while ensuring a cheap labour force for corporate America[8]. Many people whom I have met have described the humiliation they have endured while receiving public assistance. One injustice inherent in this ‘structure of misery’ is the total alienation of people living in poverty from the political, policy-making processes which affect their lives. Any research, therefore, which fails to recognise this alienation is faulty.
The conclusions which emerged from this research stem from my personal involvement in Lindeman Centre leadership development programmes with adults who receive public assistance. Through these contacts, I was invited to be a member of Illinois Department of Public Aid’s (IDPA) General Assistance (GA) Restructuring Advisory Committee. This committee met for five months between July and November in 1987 to write the rules for the Project Chance welfare reform package. The opportunity to write the rules for PC was an opportunity to help shape its policy. My other primary source of data was open discussion with people who had or were participating in PC, or had family members in the programme. Some of these people were part of the Centre’s leadership programmes, others were in GED or ABE classes. Data were gathered throughout this period from committee meetings, memos, draft documents, and discussions with people receiving public assistance, advocates representing not-for-profit organisations, and high level state officials. Most of this data will never be published, but are essential to understanding the short and long-term implications of PC.
In developing this research structure, I recognised that at one end of the welfare reform phenomena are the policy makers and at the other are the people who are most affected by the policy. They are distinguished by race, class, and culture. Understanding the roles of adult educators at the policy end and the service delivery end is crucial in understanding the education of the poor in PC.
The advisory committee
The GA Restructuring Advisory Committee met on the 13th floor of a modern building on South Michigan Avenue, facing Lake Michigan, a block from Chicago’s Hilton, walking distance from the affluent shopping of the Magnificent Mile, and hidden from the ghettos where the policy would be implemented. Typically during the meetings, the IDPA bureaucrats sat at one end of a long table or against the back wall, while the rest of the table was filled with advocates involved in poor people’s issues, including welfare, homelessness, etc. This heightened the already adverse relationship between the two groups. The committee was mostly white, mostly male, mostly middle to upper-middle class. There were three women recipients of supplemental security income - a government subsidy set aside for elderly and disabled. They were the representatives for all welfare recipients. There were no young adult recipients at this table, the group most affected by PC. Even though education is a central component of PC, I was the only educator on the committee. When discussed, a vague notion of education as a panacea was used void of any substantive programmatic strategies. In essence, education was a word frequently used but never conceptually analysed.
Project ‘fat’ chance
Today, two years since the programme was initiated, critics have assailed PC as Project ‘Fat’ Chance. PC is criticised for not providing meaningful training or creating jobs for the unemployed. As a result, PC is ‘just shuffling people around’[9].
Ironically, approximately 70% of PC participants who find jobs do so during the initial, independent job search, before a full assessment and any subsequent education[10]. These successes are not distinguished in public reports from job placements resulting from education, thereby creating a false sense of PC’s statistical success. John Muller, assistant associate director of IDPA, said of PC’s success, ‘I could concoct any figure you want but I don’t think it would be worth quoting’[11].
IDPA throughout the meetings measured its results by how many recipients participated in PC and how many were placed in jobs. Through PC, 41,412 entered employment. Another 40,139 were sanctioned and benefits suspended for non-co-operation[12]. Apparently sanctioning is as effective as job placement and education in achieving IDPA’s goals. Sanctioning is an impersonal procedural process. One young woman related the trials of her mother who was sanctioned when ‘a form wasn’t filled out and she got cut-off for three months’[13].
One incentive for participation is the potential job market for welfare recipients. The entering hourly wage medium for fiscal year 1987 was $3.86. Some 37% entered at or below minimum wage of $3.35, and another 28% at $3.36-$4.45. How feasible is it, at this wage, to leave welfare when you have children and no job security in an entry level position? As expected the number of participants who returned to public assistance after one year, was 26-32%, and after 18 months rose to 44%[14].
Clearly, the statistics provided by IDPA suggest that recipients who enter jobs through PC do not leave poverty. Rather they become part of the working poor, until they return to public assistance.
‘I was taught to cheat’
How do people survive on welfare when the benefits amount to less than 50% of the federally established level of poverty? In Chicago, a parent with two children receives $342 plus $210 dollars in food stamps. Most of the cash payment is used for rent, leaving little money for clothes, toiletries, transportation, utilities and other non-food items. S/he baby-sits, cleans houses, cuts hair, does day labour, etc., to earn extra cash[15]. Most people on welfare admit that this sort of cheating is common, if not expected, in order to survive.
PC effectively inhibits one’s ability to cheat. At minimum wage, a person earns $580 per month, while losing the cash payment[16]. Although there is a gross increase in income while working, there are also new expenditures, including work clothes, childcare, and transportation. In addition, most minimum wage jobs do not provide necessary benefits such as health insurance. And, there is less time to cut hair and cheat just as there is less time to be with family. In essence, not only does PC fail to provide adequate income, it prohibits other forms of income.
As a result of this scenario, people usually return to public assistance, and re-enter PC. One way to cheat is through education. GED and ABE classes temporarily are ‘safe havens’ requiring little time while ensuring benefits.
Educational ghettoism
Education for the poor is usually within walking distance of home. Most person who live in Robert Taylor Homes (the largest public housing development in the world) never leave to attend class. Classes are held in back rooms of churches, community social rooms, neighbourhood libraries, etc. Facilities are usually minimal, a chalk board, tables, chairs. Often the floor tile is aged and broken, and the room needs cleaning and paint. The windows overlook the students’ neighbourhood. The students are all neighbours and friends. Typically, classes are all black, Hispanic or white. The students are not mainstreamed. In fact they are culturally insulated from the mainstream. The only connections with the ‘outside’ world are teacher and books. Commonly classes have 50% PC participants and a total of 75% welfare recipients.
How long does a student stay in a GED or ABE class? In the rare case when a student is able to pass a GED test, but needs to build self-confidence, s/he may be out in six weeks. If they begin at a fifth grade reading level, they may be there for two or more years - assuming they go continuously. But many students interrupt their education for personal reasons, family illness, or to take a part-time job. These students may be in and out of these classes for four or more years, and never get a GED. Consciously or subconsciously, by playing ‘the education game’ they know that they will not put their welfare benefits in jeopardy.
The role of the teacher is not clear. Most are ‘part-timers’, receiving little training and less support. Many of the classes I have attended are boring, emphasising a narrow curriculum designed to pass the GED test. Politicisation of the classroom has yet to develop. Questions seldom asked include: ‘Why am I here? What kind of job will I be able to get when I graduate? Why do the few jobs pay so little? What kind of education do ‘the haves’ receive? How will this education help my children? And how is this education relevant to my life?’ The self-paced, individualistic nature of the curriculum prevents collective analyses of these questions.
Many of the talented GED and ABE students are motivated by an illusion of going to college after they graduate. Whereas GED and ADE can be long-term, subsequent education is limited to short-term programmes. ‘The basic certificate (college credit) courses will be limited to two semester (non-preparatory) programmes’[17]. Although there are many options for PC participants in Chicago, IDPA has contracted with the City Colleges for a large percentage of the new placements. Even though City Colleges has an extensive adult education programme, this option may not, in fact, bode well for participants in light of new research revealing its failures[18]. With a rapidly declining student enrolment, ambitious building expansion, and a dismal record of student preparation, City Colleges need new sources of money. The financial windfall of PC for City Colleges is obvious. This issue was not discussed during the committee meetings.
Education offered through PC is designed for the poor, becoming part of a recipient’s educational ghetto. The Freirean cultural revolution through education that we studied in graduate school has yet to impact Chicago’s poor.
Final comments
Education in itself will not raise people out of welfare and poverty. In spite of the important role of education, a more humane, more imaginative, and socially relevant effort is needed to develop long-term education policies in welfare-to-work. If the goal of PC is social control of the poor, then it is successful. Education ignores the political realities of poverty when it merely processes individuals and fails to critically analyse socio-economic aspects of class, race and culture. Education, if it promotes social change, must provide not only for personal development, but for personal development within the collective context of community and cultural development[19]. PC ignores the ‘structural misery’ of poverty. As adult education becomes more mainstream, it will be more difficult to criticise existing educational systems such as City Colleges and mandatory ADE and GED programmes.
‘Welfare reform’ is a nebulous phrase, especially for the people who are dependent upon public aid. This study suggests that education in PC, in contradiction to what Governor Thompson claims, is not designed to help people compete in the employment arena and become independent wage earners. This study also suggests that there is a need for adult educators, in concert with students of these programmes, to analyse the present role of education in welfare reform, and to develop policies which will lead to new strategies. The first step in developing these new policies is to recognise and rectify the destructive gap between policy makers and the people the policy will affect.
Yet, education, as manifested in welfare reform programmes such as PC, is not without purpose. It provides a safe haven for recipients, jobs for adult educators, monies for education systems, and fulfils the needs of the policy makers to satisfy the taxpaying public.
[1] Clarence Page (1987) Moynihan’s plan: welfare tinkering, not much change. Chicago Star Tribune, August 5, 198