[Comment] Education remains ticket out of poverty

From The Indianapolis Star

Our position: Education is key to helping Indiana's poor families find a way out of poverty.

Indiana's numbers are bleak. A 74 percent increase in the number of Hoosiers receiving food stamps from 2000 to 2004. A 30 percent boost in the number of students who qualify for free lunches at school because of low family incomes. A 19 percent rise in the number of students who dropped out of school in the 2003-2004 academic year.

Blame at least some of the sour statistics on the lingering effects of recession. Indiana still has a net loss of 46,000 jobs since 2000. And many of the jobs that have been created don't pay as well as the manufacturing positions that have migrated out of state.

The result, as the Kids Count in Indiana 2005 data book shows, is a sharp increase in the number of families in Indiana living near the poverty line. "The explosion in the numbers for things like food stamps is a clear indication that people are in trouble,'' Charles Warren, research manager for the Indiana Institute for Working Families, told Star reporter Tim Evans.

Warren says that about 40 percent of children in Indiana "are living in families that can't meet their basic needs.''

That number should be a shock to upper- and middle-income Hoosiers, state officials and business and educational leaders. Bill Stanczykiewicz, president of the Indiana Youth Institute, the organization that publishes the annual Kids Count report, notes that children living near or below the poverty line are more likely to suffer from abuse or neglect, develop cognitive skills at a slower pace and experience behavioral problems.

The implications are profound for a state struggling to rebuild its economy and to develop a work force capable of filling high-skilled jobs.
Improving Hoosiers' education level is essential to those goals. But if, as the Kids Count report indicates, a significant percentage of children continue to enter school behind their peers academically and live in families where education is slighted by the struggle to make ends meet, then building a better-educated work force will remain an elusive achievement.

What are the answers? One is for the state, admittedly short on money, to find a way to make early childhood education available to more kids.

Another is for state government to be more aggressive in tapping federal dollars that help poor families. Indiana was 45th in the nation in 2003 in per-capita federal spending on programs aimed at low-income children and families.
A generation of Hoosiers is fighting to pay for the basics of life. They need their neighbors' help in creating opportunities for them to succeed.