<p>Zoos, pregnant teens attend public school all the time. Being pregnant does not prevent a student from learning??? My highschool had a special program for the teens ( if they chose to participate) that helped them with whatever services they might need. They also provided free daycare so the mom’s could attend classes after the birth. The girls could choose to be in an alternative school (available to all students) or the regular high school. If the student required extra time off ( due to giving birth) the teachers just gave them independent study work.</p>
<p>The key distinction with this approach and the one you are suggesting is choice. Each girl and her parents can choose what is best for them. Staying at the regular high school is important if a girl wants to go to college. It does happen. In the year I graduated a girl had a baby her sophmore year. She kept the baby ( with a lot of help from her parents) and went on to graduate in the top 10% of our class. She is currently perusing a degree in Engineering and moved away to attend college with her son in tow.</p>
<p>You may not agree morally with unmarried teen pregnancy (I certainly don’t think it is ideal) but that doesn’t give you the right to decide how they should be educated.</p>
<p>That’s not what you said earlier when you said:</p>
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<p>Moreover, I’m not a big fan of opt-out provisions…especially when they are provided and implemented by large powerful institutions. Guess why email spammers prefer opt-out provisions rather than mandated opt-in ones? </p>
<p>A true choice made of one’s free will should be opt-in by default. </p>
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<p>And how did you know that the policy you were espousing:</p>
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<p>isn’t any different…especially when it takes the choice out of the student/family hands? </p>
<p>I don’t know about you…but taking an individual student’s/family’s agency away and placing it in the hands of public school officials who don’t even realize their actions may be unconstitutional and thus, illegal doesn’t sound like “People over principles.” </p>
<p>Instead, it substitutes the principles of the school officials at the expense of the person being supposedly helped…the pregnant student. </p>
<p>Don’t know about you…but that’s pretty sketchy in my book.</p>
<p>That is a very good point dietz199. I’m in favor of choice. Maybe I should revise my position to say that there should be an opt-out provision along with great marketing to show how desirable it would be for a pregnant girl to have every necessary resource available to her. I don’t think charters should “kick out” anyone, but I think pregnant girls and young moms need special assistance.</p>
This is what I’m advocating for. Giving them what they need and not forcing them to fit into a model that won’t work for them. Maybe it’s the difficulty of an online forum but I am absolutely, emphatically not making a moral judgment. I want to make sure that as many pregnant girls get out of high school with a diploma, a healthy baby and a future. I support spending whatever is necessary to make that happen.</p>
Exactly right. And in the context of the discussion, I decided that there could be circumstances under which it would be better for a girl to stay put, so I revised my opinion. Thoughtful people do that when they listen to others and respect their views. Imagine that!</p>
<p>Still ignoring your little boo-boo and resultant tirade? You were wrong and you apologize, right?</p>
<p>I’m not against the public funding of charter schools so long as they are held to the same standards, regulations, and policies regular public schools are held…especially in areas such as prohibition of discriminatory policies or those which otherwise violates the students’ constitutional rights. </p>
<p>If charter schools don’t like the public legal accountability which comes with such funds…they’re free to refuse them and go private.</p>
Lima, I know it happens. I know several girls who have done it and gone onto fine things. The reason they were able to do it is that they weren’t left to fend for themselves or cobble together a mess of childcare, forced to miss school when baby was sick, or figure out the logistics on their own. I want them not to be on their own. I do want services right there for them every day. I’m not a fan of Secretary Clinton, but if ever a village were required to raise a child, it’s when a child becomes a mother.</p>
<p>I also think that if these services could be provided in the public school, it would be absolutely perfect. My position isn’t necessarily to remove the girls but to include the services in the building, wherever that actually is.</p>
<p>Zoose, I’ll admit I’m a little confused now. Do you believe pregnant teens should be allowed to stay in their schools if they choose or be forced into alternative schools/programs? </p>
<p>Sorry, romani, I realized that it sounded like I was advocating for yanking the girls out. I’m really not. I’m advocating for every pregnant girl to have services available in an accessible location (this is key for me) so that her educational and parenting needs can both be met and hopefully get her to full adulthood ready to take on the world.</p>
<p>The thought of a vulnerable girl (I’ve had kids, I know how tough those early months are) and baby tossed into a NYC public high school with no support makes my blood run cold. I just find that nightmarish.</p>
<p>That’s precisely why I went on that “tirade”…especially when I’ve encountered many folks who used similar arguments/rhetoric to call for segregating pregnant students into “alternative schools”…their own educational needs/desires be damned. </p>
<p>There were even a few commenters who expressed the same sentiments earlier in this very thread. </p>
<p>Instead, I’m for putting the pregnant student/family in the driver’s seat and letting her/them decide the educational course. </p>
<p>At the most, public school/publicly funded charter officials may offer options/suggestions, but they should not make the choice for her/her parents. </p>
<p>Not sure about “marketing” the alternative school idea as that can be abused by school officials to the point of effectively badgering the student into a choice. Once the student/family makes up her/family makes up their mind, school officials should honor that decision and drop any further discussion unless the student/family decides to reconsider it at a later point.</p>
How about that quote cobrat? Show some class here. You said things based on your mistake that created unnecessary hostility and confusion. Take responsibility and put yourself in the driver’s seat as a member of this community.</p>
<p>Several pages of posts ago, a poster quoted portions of this recent research. It warrants reading. It supports the view that school age teen births are NOT necessarily accidents but rather can be explained by a decision to use the pregnancy to opt-out of struggling to achieve economic self-sufficiency. </p>
<p>According to the research, a pregnant teen girl in Mississippi is 4 times more likely to give birth than a pregnant teen girl in New Hampshire.</p>
<p>For pregnancies of 14 year olds and under in 2008 there were 5,764 births, 6,010 abortions and an estimated 1,750 miscarriages. For pregnancies of 15-17 there were approximately 100,000 abortions and miscarriages and 130,000 births.</p>
<p>When you consider the drastic fall in teen pregnancies since 2000, those 135,000 girls who get pregnant and give birth may not be all that receptive to efforts to “get that high school diploma.” Frightening.</p>
<p>From 07DAD’s link: “to address teen childbearing in America will require addressing some difficult social problems: in particular, the perceived and actual lack of economic opportunity among those at the bottom of the economic ladder.”</p>
<p>Indeed.</p>
<p>I had a boyfriend as a teen. I was extremely vigilant about contraceptive use. I fully believed I’d go to college and I’d succeed afterwards. I fully understood that having a baby at that time would make it very unlikely that I would.</p>
<p>If I’d thought those prospects were not there for me, ever, I suppose I might have made a different choice. Maybe.</p>
<p>Then again, I had education, access to birth control, my own doctor, supportive and understanding parents. Avoiding pregnancy was pretty easy for me to do.</p>
<p>^^ unfortunately I 'm sure you’re right. The majority of the pregnant girls at my high school were not on the “college path”. I do think many did not try to prevent pregnancy and that is culturally and socioeconomically influenced. It’s not that they don’t know about birth control, they choose not to use it.</p>
<p>But, if a charter school refuses to allow pregnant teens then, IMO they are refusing to serve a segment of the population. I don’t think public funds should be given to a school that is allowed to discriminate for ANY reason.</p>
<p>I have absolutely no problem with charter schools (went to a public charter myself). I don’t think teacher’s union’s are “afraid” of charter schools (as other posters believe) taking their funding. I think the majority of teachers teach to make a difference in the world. If someone has a better idea and is allowed to do it, I think they’d be all for it. What teacher’s do not support however, is charter schools that are allowed to discriminate. If a charter school cannot accommodate the needs of the population in general, then they shouldn’t receive public funding. It is not fair that the “needy” students would be left all going to the “only” school that will accept them (traditional public). </p>
<p>I think a better answer would be for students and parents to demand that kids that are extremely disruptive or violent be removed from the regular public and be forced to attend an alternative school. Parents of good kids need to be the ones bringing the lawsuits (instead of the opposite which is happening now). Seems kind of silly to move all the “good” kids when I believe that is the overwhelming majority.</p>
<p>If parents want a school that teaches a particular religion or is discriminatory in any way, then I feel they need to pay for that separately. They should not be given taxpayer money to do that. Public schools are necessary for the advancement of our society and thus require everyone to pay whether you use them or not. People that don’t have kids aren’t allowed a “rebate” from public schools.</p>
<p>Ohio, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head in many ways. </p>
<p>A lot of young women that come into the shelter my age that have children (often 2, 3, 4 children already) never had the idea that they could go to college or do any better. The schools are some of the worst in the state and college is never pushed. They’re trapped in that cycle and there’s very few motivators to get out that they can see. </p>
<p>Roman, I’m sure this is true where your shelter is but I don’t think it is universal. My HS put everyone on the college track and offered “support classes” for students that struggled, didn’t attend school regularly or needed a place to do homework. I worked in those classes as a peer tutor. The kids were constantly told what they needed for college admission and the high school held workshops on paying for college and financial aid. The problem was not the school (although there were some “bad” classes) as much as it was the studen’s home life. Their parents didn’t support them academically (didnt know how) and often “partied” with them. I don’t know what the solution is for that but I do think we have to keep trying.</p>
<p>My parents also took in foster kids. I didn’t see too many of the kids turn out very different from their parents. My parents talked with them constantly about college and how it could change their lives.</p>
<p>No, it’s not universal. But it’s more common than you’d think in low income urban areas (the “ghetto”, the inner city, whatever you want to call it).</p>
<p>And lol. Financial aid information? Conferences? Anything? That’s funny. These schools are in the bottom 10% of the state and are lucky if they get kids to go through their senior year without dropping out, getting pregnant, arrested, etc. These are failing schools. Not necessarily their fault but you think things are going on that aren’t. These kids don’t know the first thing about financial aid (at least not from their school).</p>
<p>It really is the home and the milieu, meaning peers, which affects a kid. Remember, the big research shows that peers influence more than family. The absence of family, the lack of aspiration of family, is very hard to overcome, especially since it usually occurs in the large context of peers with the same limited aspirations. I often note the difference between a school system like Watertown, MA versus Brookline, MA is aspiration. Kids in Brookline think about going to the best colleges, while kids in Watertown tend to have lower aspirations. But Watertown is a successful place. Move that down to a bad neighborhood. I saw areas working in criminal justice in Detroit where, frankly, it was amazing kids survived at all. I couldn’t believe how awful their lives were.</p>
<p>I know a person who runs a non-profit called The Right Question Project. It’s aimed at teaching parents how to interact with the schools so they can help their kids. The idea is to improve the family to improve the kid by breaking down the family’s inability to deal with, to understand, to argue with the school system. </p>
<p>It’s funny that my area is full of “entitled parents” who insist on special things for their kids - except, sadly, for many of the kids with real problems because the parents are in denial. Parents in lower income areas see themselves as “unentitled”, as people the system will never listen to. This is one reason why so many of those relationships can become adversarial: they tend to fester through non-communication and mis-communication until they explode in anger.</p>
<p>As for shelters, my mom worked for many years with and was on the board of a few runaway and sanctuary shelters. It was tough. The kids and often the young women were often abused. We tend to forget that many kids grow up in abusive families, with alcohol and drug dependent parents and relatives who hit and sexually abuse them. </p>
<p>It’s very easy to imagine the world can work better. It’s not easy at all to believe that if you know how awful the world is for so many. When you spend time in criminal justice or in social care, you see the damage.</p>
<p>Roman, I know my HS was nothing like the ones you have seen. But we were kind of weird in the fact that we had almost no middle class. Over 50 % of students were on free/reduced lunch. The majority of students are from single parent homes. I think I saw a lot of what you describe but the difference was in how many. We had enough “good” students for the school to promote college going. The non college going were just along for the ride. My HS was just on the local news for having one of the highest graduation rates in the state for students in general and the highest graduation rate for minorities. I can’t say however,that they have the highest college going rate.</p>