Preparing Teenage Mothers on Welfare for School, Parenthood, and Work:
Lessons from New Chance and LEAP

A Forum — September 19, 1994

How effective are financial incentives , model education and social service programs in preparing and encouraging young AFDC mothers to complete their education, obtain training, and achieve self-sufficiency?  What are the barriers to moving large numbers of young families off welfare and into jobs?  Findings from two model programs were the subject of luncheon presentations by researchers from the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC).

Both project New Chance, a 16-site national demonstration program, and Ohio's Learning, Earning and Parenting (LEAP) program serve young mothers who lack a high school diploma, reported MDRC Senior Research Associates David Long and Janet Quist. These young mothers comprise a critically important segment of the welfare population. "Welfare cases that begin with a teen birth account for more than half of all AFDC expenditures." According to Long: "The short-term strategy for teen parents begins with education.  High school diplomas predict future income strikingly well."

Both LEAP and New Chance have produced statistically significant increases in high school completion. MDRC's findings were not entirely rosy, however.  "Mixed and sobering," were the words Quist used to describe the preliminary results of New Chance, a voluntary program offering an array of education, training, and counseling services.  The LEAP program, which offers financial incentives for young dropouts on welfare to stay in or return to school, also yielded mixed results, Long said -- "a good news and not so good news story."

LEAP

Ohio's Learning, Earning, and Parenting is a mandatory statewide program of financial incentives to encourage young mothers on welfare to enroll in school and attend regularly. Mothers who do so receive a $62 bonus in their monthly welfare grant; those who fail to enroll or show poor attendance have their grants reduced by $62 per month.  Program participants receive case management services as well as transportation and child care assistance.  Some participants in Cleveland also receive enhanced services via schools or community-based service providers.

MDRC has been evaluating LEAP since the program's inception in 1989, comparing the educational performance of program participants with those of a randomly assigned control group of young mothers not assigned to LEAP.  Though some early implementation problems arose, they were resolved quickly, Long reported.  The LEAP model "got a fair run," he said.

The program's financial incentives affected virtually all participants: 93 percent were referred for at least one bonus or sanction during one 18-month period studied.  More than three-fourths were referred for a bonus, Long said, and about two-thirds were referred for sanctions .

MDRC has been evaluating LEAP in 12 Ohio counties, and it released initial results of the evaluation in 1993.  Recently MDRC conducted a follow-up analysis focused on Cleveland, home to the sixth largest AFDC population in the nation.  Long concentrated his presentation on these updated data.

Study Results: In-School vs. Out-of-School Mothers.  MDRC's analysis found that LEAP produced a significant impact on school completion rates of participants in the Cleveland area. Overall, 21.1 percent of Cleveland mothers participating in LEAP earned a high school credential during the first three years of the program, compared to 15.5 percent of young mothers not assigned to LEAP.

These overall results mask the study's most critical finding, however: the program proved far more effective encouraging still-enrolled young mothers to stay in school than it did in the "much harder job" of luring dropouts back into the educational system.

Among those still enrolled in school at the program's outset, LEAP produced a significant 8.8 percent increase in the proportion who completed high school or earned a GED: 29.2 percent of LEAP's in-school participants graduated, vs. 20.4 percent of a control group.  By contrast, among those not enrolled in school at the program's outset, LEAP increased school completion by a statistically insignificant 2.6 percent (from 8.6 percent to 11 .1 percent).  Long: "The story is definitely not as encouraging for out-of-school youth."  A substantial number of dropouts did not respond to the LEAP incentives: 22 percent of dropouts enrolled in LEAP were sanctioned nine or more times for non-compliance and received zero bonuses for active school participation.

Enhanced Services.  In addition to documenting LEAP's impact on educational performance, MDRC's recent study also evaluated the Cleveland Student Parent Demonstration -- a program of enhanced services delivered to approximately half of all LEAP participants in Cleveland.

For the most part, LEAP is not a service-delivery program: LEAP participants typically receive the same services as non-LEAP AFDC recipients.  In Cleveland, however, additional school-based or community-based services were provided as a complement to LEAP's financial incentives.  Six "enhanced high schools" were established to provide participants with intensive case-management by staff stationed at the school, in-school child care, and parenting/life skills instruction.  For LEAP participants not attending school regularly, LEAP provided community-based services -- including outreach, special GED preparation classes, and parenting/life skills instruction.  Together these enhanced services cost $1,965 per teen.

MDRC evaluated the enhanced service demonstration by comparing those targeted to receive enhanced services with a roughly equivalent group of Cleveland LEAP participants not receiving added services.  Overall, this analysis documented only a small and statistically insignificant impact: youth enrolled in LEAP and targeted to receive services were 8 percent more likely to earn a high school credential than youth not assigned to LEAP; those enrolled in the basic LEAP program were 6 percent more likely than non-LEAP mothers to earn a credential

This modest result masks "some hopeful signs" for the impact of enhanced services, Long said, because many teens slated to receive services never received them.  Only 43 percent of LEAP teens attended school even 20 days during any given school year.  For those who attended school even one day, the enhanced service program yielded a significant 7 percent improvement in high school completion rates.

Likewise, many out-of-school youth targeted for community-based services were never located, Long said.  Youth referred for community-based services -- whether or not they were ever contacted -- were 3.4 percent more likely to earn a credential than those not referred for community-based services.

New Chance

Janet Quist began her presentation by drawing the distinctions between LEAP and MDRC's New Chance demonstration program.  Unlike LEAP, which is mandatory statewide in Ohio, the 16 New Chance demonstration sites enroll only limited numbers of AFDC recipients. Participation in New Chance is voluntary for eligible AFDC recipients, unlike the mandatory financial incentives of LEAP.  And also unlike LEAP, New Chance provides participants a full range of services -- basic skills instruction, employability development, health education and family planning, parenting skills, child care, and more.  As a result, the per participant costs are far greater in New Chance than in LEAP.

Like LEAP, New Chance targets young AFDC mothers without a high school diploma or GED.  And as with LEAP, MDRC's evaluation of New Chance is based on random assignment of young AFDC recipients to treatment and control groups.

Evaluation Results.  In its initial 18 months, New Chance succeeded in helping many participants obtain a GED, and 65 percent of GED recipients went on to further skills training or a work internship.  New Chance also improved participants' parenting skills modestly, and it exposed their children to high-quality child care.  On the negative side, the program had high rates of absenteeism and a large number of early dropouts, high rates of repeat pregnancy, and rapid turnover among those who did find jobs.

Overall, more than 80 percent of New Chance participants remained on welfare at the end of the initial 18-month evaluation period.  Quist said 18 months is "an early point to assess impact on labor market success... (but) the young women faced barriers to self-sufficiency that were more formidable than we anticipated."

New Chance had significant success in achieving its primary short-term goal -- GED completion.  In all, 37 percent of New Chance participants earned their GED during the first 18 months, compared with 21 percent for mothers not enrolled in New Chance.  This success is encouraging given the hard-to-serve population involved.  On average, New Chance participants left school two-and-a-half years before entering the program.  This increased rate of GED attainment did not translate into improved basic skills, however.  New Chance participants and controls scored at the 7.8 grade level on the Test of Adult Basic Education.

The success in boosting GED completion rates came despite significant attendance and premature drop out problems, Quist said.  The reasons cited for absenteeism include pregnancy, illness, child care problems, substance abuse, family crises, and discouragement from others. Quist underlined the transient and unstable nature of participants' lives by noting that nearly half reported being homeless or threatened with homelessness during their stay in the program.

New Chance has been less successful in reducing the rate of repeat pregnancies by program participants.  In fact, New Chance participants were more likely than controls (57 percent to 53 percent) to become pregnant during the program period.  (Quist noted, however, that a higher proportion of New Chance participants were living with a husband or partner at the time of follow-up, and they were more likely to report that the pregnancies were planned.) "Programs have been almost uniformly unsuccessful in curbing subsequent pregnancies," Quist said .

In terms of employment, Quist said that it is too soon to determine the extent to which increased GED-attainment rates will lead to more training and to more and better jobs in the long run.  In the short-term, however, a surprisingly high number of New Chance participants - over 40 percent - worked at some point during the program period.  Unfortunately, rapid job turnover was the norm for these workers.  Reasons cited for job loss included the temporary nature of available jobs, inability to find reliable child care, pregnancy, low pay, insufficient or unworkable hours, and problems with work supervisors.

Lives of Promise, Lives of Pain.  Quist devoted the remainder of her talk to problems experienced by young mothers entering the job market.  Citing from her study, "Lives of Promise, Lives of Pain," she detailed findings from in-depth interviews with 34 New Chance participants -- all of whom had earned their GEDs through the program.  Twenty-two of the 34 women had worked at some point since earning their GEDs, yet only nine of the women were still working at the time of the interview.

All of the women expressed a preference for work over welfare but the interviews revealed significant "situational and attitudinal barriers" to sustained employment.  The common theme in young women's poor job retention was problems dealing with authority and adapting to the workplace culture.  Many New Chance women come to their jobs expecting the workplace to be democracy, Quist said.  Many bristle at the arbitrary roles and differential treatment afforded employees at different levels, and they have trouble adapting to the hierarchical structure of the work organization.  The result is "a conflict of cultures and ethics."

Of the 22 women interviewed who had been employed, 12 reported negative feelings about their supervisors.  In five cases, the reaction was so strong that it led to women quitting or being fired.  Quist described the cases of two women, using the pseudonyms "Katrina" and "Nathalie." Both women were hardworking and competent at their jobs, but both developed increasingly strained relationships with their supervisors.

Katrina, who became increasingly critical of her supervisor "for acting hypocritically and for expecting things out of us that she didn't expect from herself," was fired from her job as a medical assistant one day after making a rude comment when her supervisor took off early from work.  Earlier, the supervisor had refused to allow Katrina and a colleague to switch shifts and allow Katrina more time to get to work in the morning.  Nathalie left her job as a motel housekeeper after her supervisor tried to stop her from leaving work after her child's day care provider called to say the child was ill.  When she brought in a doctor's note the next day, the supervisor wadded it up and threw it at her.  "That's the day I quit," she said.

The problems experienced by these and other women suggest that programs to prepare young people for employment need to act as "cultural interpreters," Quist said.  "They must convey the norms, values, and customs of the workplace to those young women who have limited exposure to the world of work... and help young people learn that quitting should be the last step in dealing with a difficult work situation, not the first."

"The goal is not to make the women blindly accepting, but to help them recognize that employers are guided by different values and principles" and that they need not take personally their treatment at the workplace "young people need regular and sustained contact with helping adults" to help them understand and deal with workplace issues.

Conclusions

For Quist these interviews underscored "the up and down nature of the young mothers' lives.  These women don't progress from point A to point B to self-actualization.  We need a long-term perspective."

While both LEAP and New Chance make a statistically significant contribution to improving young mothers' lives, the fact that most women remain dependent and without a secondary school credential illustrates the immense challenges involved in attacking welfare dependency.

"A distressing aspect of the findings in Cleveland is that, with or without LEAP, few teen parents finished high school or received a GED... [The low completion rates] speak to the difficulty of encouraging this important segment of the welfare population to reach a key milestone on the road to self-sufficiency."

"While we have identified and enrolled an important population," Quist said, "we haven't completely figured out how to keep it engaged or to produce large-scale impacts."

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