Both houses of the Michigan legislature passed a bill that would tie children’s school attendance to their family’s welfare benefits. The legislation would let the state cut off assistance from the Family Independence program if a child has repeatedly poor attendance. The Senate, which is led by Republicans, passed the bill Tuesday. The house, which voted on an earlier form of the bill, will take a final vote before passing it on to Gov. Rick Snyder (R). The governor proposed in the idea in 2012, when he called on the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to make school attendance a requirement for temporary cash assistance eligibility.
A family could lose all of its cash benefits if the truant child is younger than 16.
Poor attendance has long-term effects on students’ performance. A 2008 study by the National Center for Children in Poverty showed that chronic absence in kindergarten was linked to lower academic performance in first grade, across all demographic groups, and low-income children’s performance remained poor in fifth grade.
But experts say tying welfare benefits to school attendance isn’t the best way to encourage kids to stay in school. Researchers agree that the problem is more of an economic one than a matter of insufficient financial rewards or punishments for parents whose children are frequently absent.
Robert Balfanz, Ph.D., a research professor at John Hopkins University School of Education and Hedy Nai-Lin Chang, director of Attendance Works, a national and state level initiative that addresses chronic absence from school wrote a paper on school attendance that was published on the National Association of Secondary School Principals website. Balfanz and Chang said chronic absence contributes to higher dropout rates and wider achievement gaps. They also noted that poverty plays a major role in absence from school. A lack of resources means that students have more barriers to accessing health care, reliable transportation and stable housing. Students may also deal with bullying and anxiety, a lack of safe pathways to school and family responsibilities.
None of the proposals Balfanz and Chang considered to solve these issues were punitive in nature. The researchers suggested using data to identify which students were in need of help and then determining how to provide assistance to children with those barriers, such as addressing childcare barriers that keep older children at home taking care of their siblings.
Michigan isn’t alone in advancing legislation that ties welfare to children’s school attendance. Tennessee, Rhode Island and Missouri advanced similar legislation in 2013.
Rhode Island’s general assembly required 80 percent attendance for welfare recipients, as well as those who wish to qualify for Medicaid. According to a local news station’s report, Jeannine Nota-Masse, then assistant superintendent of schools in Cranston, who recently became superintendent, said that although she was concerned about poor attendance, she didn’t think punishing parents financially would be effective.
Missouri legislator Steve Cookson (R) introduced legislation mandating that children of welfare recipients go to school 90 percent of the time if parents want to receive any benefits. The only exception was for physically disabled students. Cookson is the same legislator who proposed a bill that would have restricted discussions of LGBT issues in schools. Like the “don’t say gay” bill, the legislation was considered more of a political statement than a sincere proposal.
Legislation introduced by Tennessee Sen. Stacey Campfield (R) and Rep. Vance Dennis (R), required a 30 percent decrease in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, benefits when students’ progress was not considered “satisfactory.” It also made an exception for a physical handicap, but unlike the Missouri bill on school attendance, the exceptions also included learning disabilities. The state currently ties welfare to school attendance by mandating that parents would receive a 20 percent cut in benefits if students fail to meet said attendance standards.
The legislation was ultimately pulled for further study. Republicans were not convinced, including the Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris, who said of the “welfare-for-grades” bill, “You can say withholding the money from the parents doesn’t harm the child but you’re fooling yourself,” according to TNReport.
These efforts are part of a broader legislative trend toward treating poverty as more of an issue of will power and an inability to make smarter budgeting choices than greater economic forces. For example, Kansas legislation that would restrict the amount of benefits welfare recipients can withdraw to $25 a day will go into effect in July. It also restricts spending money on things the state considers luxuries, such as liquor, cruises and a dip in the pool.
There have been a number of legislative efforts across the country to institute more drug testing for welfare recipients, encourage families to limit the number of children they have by not providing financial support through certain safety net programs and imposing lifetime caps so that people can no longer receive benefits like TANF after a certain number of months.