If you want to know one reason why the nation’s
unemployment rate remains stubbornly high — and why President
Barack Obama is tackling the National Education Association and
American Federation of Teachers on reforming public schools —
just stop at the D.C. Department of Employment Services’ dreary
Naylor Road One-Stop Career Center on the District’s Southeast
Side.
On any given day, out-of-work residents step off buses and
walk past shuttered stores into the unemployment office to attend
mandatory employment counseling sessions or prepare résumés for
their latest job hunt. While there are more white-collar workers
— many from the surrounding suburbs in Virginia and Maryland —
than in previous years, the vast majority used to work in
old-school blue-collar work, office jobs such as executive
assistants, and service sector positions such as hospital cooks
and hotel maids. Many of them came through here before, looking
for work before the recession began three years ago — and will
likely be back here again because they are high school
unqualified for all but the most-menial of labor.
Those are just the D.C. residents actually
looking for work. There are at least 38,491 residents in
D.C. — more than a tenth of the workforce — who are either
chronically underemployed (or haven’t had a steady full-time job)
or have gone a year or more without a job. Many of them are
either high school dropouts or barely graduated from D.C.’s
woeful public schools. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, their lack of
education and skills would have meant nothing; they would have
easily found some kind of gainful middle-class employment. But in
an age in which many blue-collar jobs require an apprenticeship
or tech school degree, most dropouts are shut out altogether. And
no amount of federal stimulus package will do more than keep them
on the dole.
For all the sparring between Capitol Hill Democrats and
Republicans this past month about extending federal unemployment
subsidies beyond the current allotment of 99 weeks (that’s a year
and eleven months, if you’re counting), little has been said
about the long-term jobless — who will likely be a drain on
taxpayers for decades to come — and one of the most-persistent
underlying causes of this problem: The nation’s woeful public
school systems. With some 1.3 million teens dropping out of high
school every year (and millions more graduating with inadequate
reading and math skills), even more will either land in prison,
on welfare, or engaged in some less-than-legal pursuits. This
will further fuel the growth of big government that is draining
the nation’s long-term economic prospects.
Almost none of this has been solved with the $600 billion
in unemployment subsidies and federal stimulus dollars —
including subsidies for job-training programs that cannot solve
the problems of illiteracy and poor math skills plaguing the
permanently underemployed — nor will it be addressed through
future entitlements. The best solution in the long run is the one
part of President Barack Obama’s agenda that has wide bipartisan
support: The array of charter school expansion and school reform
efforts — including the $4.3 billion Race to the Top initiative
— now fiercely-opposed by the NEA, the AFT, and their allies
among traditional public education and old-school civil rights
groups. It will take an array of school choice measures, new
curricula standards, an end of the system of seniority- and
degree-based benefits and pensions, and a more-entrepreneurial
culture within education to stir the future growth needed to
overcome a $300 billion anchor on the nation’s economy.
FOURTEEN PERCENT OF HIGH SCHOOL dropouts age 25 and over
are unemployed, according to the U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics, double the jobless rate for college
graduates and four points higher than high school graduates. But
that rate obscures the true level of unemployment. The employment
participation rate for dropouts is a mere 45 percent versus 62
percent for high school grads and 70 percent for college grads;
most dropouts aren’t even working in the first place.
The problem is even worse for the newest generation of
dropouts, who, unlike earlier generations, are coming into the
workforce in an age in which old-school manufacturing jobs such
as those in the auto industry are no longer plentiful. Fifty-five
percent of high school dropouts age 16-to-24 are unemployed,
according to the BLS’ 2009 survey (the most-recent data
available); this is double the unemployment rate for collegians
and high school grads not attending college. Even worse, 52
percent of all dropouts aren’t even working or seeking employment
of any kind; since they aren’t likely to be sitting in classrooms
studying for a degree (and may not even be seeking a General
Educational Development certificate), most are unlikely to be
involved in any productive activity.
What kind of jobs can any of these dropouts get? Well, not
many. They can’t get any of the positions listed by
Forbes last month as the top-paying
blue-collar careers. This includes elevator installers-repairmen
(average annual income of $67,950), who must spend four years
gaining training for a job that combines electrical, structural
and mechanical engineering skills; and
electrical and electronics installers — who work in power
plants — who earn an average income of $67,700 after earning an
associate’s degree and years of apprenticing with veterans. Save
for commercial drivers (who must also attend technical school in
order to drive big rigs), most of the jobs need the very kind of
strong math and science skills required for high-tech
white-collar gigs.
What else can’t a dropout do? Well, there’s welding in auto
factories; gaining entry into an apprenticeship program requires
strong knowledge of trigonometry (for bending metal into the
right angles). Same for machine tool and die makers — who craft
the tools needed for every area of manufacturing — who must also
understand how to use computer-aided design software in their
work. Since most dropouts struggled with basic reading and math
while in school, it isn’t as if they would get a handle on
anything more complicated. The prospects are even dimmer outside
of blue collar work.
Sixty-three percent of all jobs require some form of higher
education (a wider array of learning than one traditionally
thinks, since it includes colleges, technical schools, and even
apprenticeship programs). This includes working in the auto
industry, where 60 credit hours at a community college is the
minimum requirement for gaining employment. Some will argue that
the degree requirements are certainly just ways to screen out
unqualified applicants (and note that they are waived for high
school grads with years of experience). And that is the point.
Save for the few who land in entertainment or bootstrap their way
to entrepreneurial success, most dropouts are essentially out of
luck.
For decades, federal and state officials have funded an
array of job retraining programs to help get dropouts into
gainful employment. In 1998, those programs were assembled under
one roof through the
Workforce Investment Act. Although this has made it easier
for unemployed workers to seek out programs, it is unclear that
this has helped make dropouts more employable.
The GED — or “Good Enough Diploma,” as comedian Chris Rock
once called it — was only marginally useful for dropouts of
previous eras, as they earned less than either high school grads
or collegians over time; it is even less-useful now. In June, a
team led by Nobel Laureate James Heckman concluded that it has
“minimal value of the certificate in terms of labor market
outcomes.” The most-recent effort at workforce retraining
involves community colleges, the single-biggest destination for
all college-bound students. But community colleges graduate just
a fifth of freshmen in three years — and most high school
dropouts wouldn’t even qualify to attend.
THE LONG-TERM PROBLEMS FOR DROPOUTS points out the
single-biggest problem for the American economy — and the
single-biggest threat to the concept of small government most
conservatives hold dear: A public education system that is hardly
doing the job. Thirty-three percent of American third-graders —
and a quarter of all eighth-grade students — read Below Basic
proficiency on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Based on the high numbers of freshmen forced to take remedial
math and English, it is clear that K-12 isn’t doing much better
with high school graduates either.
The fact that America’s public schools were never really
intended for actually providing an education, but for inculcating
civic values (and to prevent the expansion of Catholic schools),
is certainly part of the problem. But the other problems — the
low quality of instruction among
America’s teaching corps; the lack of high-quality school
options for all but the wealthiest parents; and English and math
curricula that would hardly match up to (often low) 19th-century
standards — can and should be fixed before more dropouts add
stress to taxpayer’s pockets.
Oddly enough, education reform is the one area where Obama
may be on track. The $4.3 billion Race to the Top program has
managed to spur states such as California and New York to
eliminate (or modify) caps on charter schools — the
most-successful form of school choice — and force efforts to
bring private-sector performance management to evaluating the
work of teachers (just 2.1 percent of them are ever dismissed
currently). Although a clever form of
unfunded mandate, it is at least one that can force education
in the right direction. In D.C., for example, schools boss
Michelle Rhee took a step in the right direction by
sacking 241 teachers deemed unable to improve student
achievement.
Some federal school reform money would be a lot better in
the long run than another $750 million a week in federal spending
that will only triple even if the Republicans take control of
Congress next year.
