Tennessee state senator: Reduce welfare payments to families if children don’t do well in school

It’s not unreasonable to expect a parent on Welfare to make sure their children are in school. If they receive benefits based on having children and won’t send said children to school, they should lose benefits and the children should be placed with a family that will.

I am speaking as a single parent who works and manages every penny in order to ensure I can get my children to school each day. Parenting means sacrificing whatever is necessary to raise healthy children. I go without stylists, manicures, mall shopping, fancy car, etc. because they come first. They shouldn’t suffer because their parents are irresponsible or uncaring.

It is not acceptable to teach children the entitlement mentality. Soon there will be no one left to produce anything.

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If they reduce the welfare payments, kids will not do better in school. It just won’t work. Parents who fail to see the link between education and income will never see the link. We must instead focus on the children. Work with them so THEY understand it. Their parents are a lost cause.

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Please keep in mind that slum lord Stacy Campfield is an idiot and has helped make East TN the laughingstock of the nation. Campfield of the “AIDS was caused by sexual intercourse between a man and a monkey” and the ever popular “Don’t Say Gay” legislation. These are only 2 of his head turning blatherings. Google is your friend if you want to see just how low he has driven the IQ average of the TN legislature, which was pretty low to start with. Any half baked idea he proposes is guaranteed to be a product of his far right fringe lunacy and this one is no exception.

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Tackling generational poverty is a worthy goal. However, the problem should not be over simplified thereby resulting in symptomatic solutions versus solutions that address the root cause of generational poverty. Reducing welfare payments for students not making academic progress really places the burden of ensuring the family has fiscal resources to survive, and barely at best, on the child and not solely on the parent where the burden should be. The parent of generational poverty made a decision to be poor whether by choice or acceptance of poverty and its related conditions. The question that begs to be addressed is how do we change the mindset of those experiencing generational poverty toward them embracing a rejection of poverty and an embracing of education while also providing societal support and motivation to matriculated to the middle class. One solution involves disbanding low income housing and providing the poor an opportunity to live in economically diverse communities. This would allow them to see pictures of success thereby giving them a vision of the possibilities. Another solution would be federal and state vouchers for a full ride to state post-secondary schools thereby affording those of generational poverty to educate themselves and become career ready. A third solution would be tax credits to relocate to zip codes of higher income levels thereby institutionalizing the value that poverty should be rejected and escaped when opportunity avails. Another solution should be state and federal tax credits for expenses that improve one’s household quality of life such as school visits, expenses for student travel, expenses related to educational academic camps and college visits. These are just a few actions that could be institutionalized as incentives for overcoming generational poverty. I am sure they are not flawless but at least they are ideas for a worthy debate.

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This idea sounds good to the middle class and people who are part of the general culture, but, unfortunately, many generational poverty parents are NOT of that culture. They have an entirely different way of living their lives, and no punishments, taxes, rewards, etc. will change them. Maybe a dictatorship like China could make parents act differently by physically grabbing them and “reprogramming” them by force but otherwise forget it. We have forever lost most of the generational poverty underclass parents, but maybe there are ways we CAN reach the children that we have not thought of.

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How stupid! Impoverished children have enough pressure without the precarious demands of good grades. Who will determine what good grades are? All A’s? Minimum passing? Too many variables to make a blanket statement like this.

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Doesn’t Brazil have some sort of social program that tie benefits to habits that improve a child’s outcome ( like regular doctor appts, attendance at school, parent-teacher conferences, parenting classes)? I thought it was somehow making a difference… need to research it

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This is just as stupid as suspending children from school when they become disciplinary problems. However, I understand the frustration as well. Public assistance can’t be a free trough. If it costs nothing, why would anyone try to get off of it? This effort is exactly the wrong way to approach it. Instead we should require the parents to also attend school or targeted job training. If they have health issues, fine, let them work from a desk or on a phone setting appointments. Keep everyone busy so the transition back to working will not be a total shock. Until I hear a plan like that from republicans or democrats, I might start to have faith in them again. Instead we’ll have claims of racism and other assorted diversions that keep the issue needlessly emotional. If a kid can’t behave in school, we need them to be moved into another kind of school. Why is this concept so radical these days? When they screw up they need MORE school, not suspensions. But cutting off their food supply is barbaric.
Grobbbbbbbbbbb

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How about also reducing legislators’ salaries if their kids don’t do well?

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Unfortunately the senator’s “stick” is too far downstream. Primary prevention to break the cycle would recommend that generational government dependent/poverty parents (”parent” is more accurate) not be allowed to have children…

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@ mikey

funny, I was thinking the same thing about democrats.

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I have worked at several Title I schools – low income – and have never noticed an abundance of parental involvement until I worked at a school with 96%+ ESOL population. Classes were offered for parents in their language that taught them about THE AMERICAN EDUCATION CULTURE AND HOW TO BECOME INVOLVED AND HELP THEIR CHILDREN SUCCEED. They signed up and they attended these classes faithfully! The auditorium was packed every time we had an honors program because their children were excelling. Our test scores were very encouraging. The discipline problems were much less than at my other schools with parental involvement all but absent. A majority of our parents didn’t speak English. A majority of our students came from large families with low incomes. I don’t know how to do it, but parental involvement in education is a must if we expect children to escape the culture of poverty. Certainly punishing a family’s children because their parents failed to become involved isn’t the answer. But the question still begs for an answer!

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When I taught in a low-income school, teachers did not give low grades on report cards as they knew the children would come in the next day with bruises. On one hand, the parents wanted the children to have good grades, but did nothing to support it at home. They did not know how, and thought that simply sending the kids to school was enough. Once upon a time, that may have been true, but that is no longer the case. Since schools have their hands tied regarding discipline and any true consequences for not learning, not doing homework, etc., if the parents do not help children they do not learn how to learn. They discipline when it is too late, i.e. a bad report card. So this proposal to punish parents would only harm children unless it came with a LOT of training for the parents on how to help their children. (The days of schools being able to hold students accountable is not coming back soon, if ever, so no need to suggest.) Yes, the public schools are a mess. Fixable, yes, but not with crazies like this in charge.

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I can see attendance being a factor but not grades. Why would you place the responsibility for the family’s finances on the back of a child? How awful. What if the parents are uneducated and can’t help the child academically?

Parents DO have control over having the children there on time, so I think tardies and attendance could be a reasonable measure for parental involvement but definitely NOT the child’s grades.

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Just goes to show Tennessee has about as many whacks in the senate as Georgia.

Campfield.,wherever there is a ludicrous notion, he’ll be there.
This is retarded..talk about putting pressure on kids..sorry johnny..you don’t get any food this week since you failed your math test.

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i think this is a good idea…… IF you also agree that teachers should be “punished” for not having their students do well in school also. if teacher’s pay is related to how well a child does in school, doesn’t it seem fair that a parent’s “pay” should also be tied to how well their own child does in school? for those that say that a parent can not FORCE a child to study/read/do homework, etc, doesn’t that argument hold true for the teacher also?

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It is hard for me to believe that all these teachers are this blog do not believe in accountability of the parent or believe in the principle that actions have consequences.

My son made two c’s his first semester of HS and it was during the last two weeks of the semester. I jerked the xbox out of his room, the TV, outlawed the use of the phone during the school week and the only way he could use his computer was for a school related activity. He then had to sit for at least one hour per night in front of my wife and myself for one hour per night and do homework and if he did not have homework then he would write a paper on a topic of my choosing. Guess what 4 A’s and 3 B’s the next semester and his items were returned. He wanted a new laptop his 10th grade year and we told him the price was 5 A’s and 2 B’s and he made 6 A’s and 1 B. Made the same grades 2nd semester to keep the computer. This year we offered $500 for all A’s and he accomplished the goal.

When these kids make it to the real world then they will be facing the same punishment and reward system. Raises and bonuses come when you exceed expectations and you get terminated when you fail to meet expectations.

You can never convince me that punishment and rewards do not work. It worked in my house and it works in the business world.

This Senator is onto a valid point that we need to teach even the poor that they will be held accountable for their actions and if they teach it to their children then these children will be successful in the real world.

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Seriously folks, I am not re inventing the wheel. This is already being done in over 40 countries with positive results every where it is in place. Look it up.

Here is a quote from the article…

“Most of our Fixes columns so far have been about successful-but-small ideas. They face a common challenge: how to make them work on a bigger scale. This one is different. Brazil is employing a version of an idea now in use in some 40 countries around the globe, one already successful on a staggeringly enormous scale. This is likely the most important government anti-poverty program the world has ever seen. It is worth looking at how it works, and why it has been able to help so many people.”

Here is the link for more. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...

Sen. Stacey Campfield

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Reality Check- I am not defending the current welfare system because it is beyond help. Please see my post @ 7:14. We need an innovative approach that does not punish the child but provides an opportunity for parents and children to learn how to overcome poverty and become self-sufficient. I learned from my parents (by word and deed) how to manage a household, personal finances, responsibilities such as schoolwork, how to work and hold down a job, how to budget for groceries, etc. I am sure most children do get some of this instruction from their parents but sadly I see too many adults unable to function at the most basic level to believe that all were raised with parents to guide them and establish an example for them. I doubt it is because the parents don’t love their children or that they are bad people but more than likely never had the example themselves. It’s hard to provide something for your children if you don’t even know what it is. We need programs to teach parents how to manage their own households.

But I have to say I don’t have a problem also requiring sterilization of adults who are unable/unwilling to support their children when they have been given an opportunity to do so. Why burden them or society with more mouths to feed?

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“Education combined with a caring, compassionate heart toward both the children and their parents will do more good, than will punishment, in helping to improve the lives of these people.”

Of course it will, Bless your heart.

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I think a neuter and spay policy for welfare recipients would be more effective, but I’m sure the Obamacrats would argue that it is their “right” to have six kids by five different fathers – all on the taxpayers dime.

Of course, this is the same government that provides instruction to ILLEGAL ALIENS on how to apply for welfare, so we shouldn’t be surprised.

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Definitely an interesting concept, but what I find more interesting is that many of the reasons I’m reading for not doing it are the same reasons teachers give for why they shouldn’t be held accountable for test scores. If parents can’t make their children study/go to school/pay attention/do what they’re supposed to do to succeed, then how are teachers supposed to do those things? In my experience of teaching kids in every SES group, I found that by far the kids who didn’t want to do what they were supposed to do came from single parent homes who were on a variety of taxpayer assistance. Mama wasn’t working, she was collecting welfare, section 8 housing, food stamps, but she sent her kids to school for free breakfast, free lunch, and no homework. These were the parents who wouldn’t come in for conferences and whose children expected me to provide them with notebooks, pencils, and whatever else they needed to do their work. I’m not sure a child’s performance should be tied to welfare, but I darn sure think that parents on welfare should be penalized if they don’t participate in their child’s education.

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I agree with Lee @7:55. As long as our policy is to reward promiscuous behavior, the problems with welfare generated children will never go away.

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It is too bad that some people just don,t give a dam about whether their kids succeed. The generational welfare epidemic is slowly devouring the United Stares. All these so called “temporary” programs have, in many cases, turned “permanent”. Where we live, there are families that have been living off the $2000 a month they get from the government for so long, there is no way they will ever go back to work. The elders in these families, teach the young ones early on, how to get the money from the government. We are being devoured by our own generosity.

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To Sen. Stacey Campfield:

Thank you for responding to posters on this blog. I want to urge you to read the article below that I had written and posted on my personal blog, regarding an in-depth look into education. Many of the educational realities that I have explained in that article are not fully understood, yet, by all teachers, nor even by all administrators, nor the general public, including political leaders. I had earned a B.A. in English in 1970, and an M. Ed. as a Reading Specialist in 1973. I have functioned as an Instructional Lead Teacher, grades 1 – 7, and as an English teacher, Reading Department Chair, reading teacher, Student Support Team Chair, grades 8 -12, in the course of my 35-year educational career. I am presently retired.

http://maryelizabethsings.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/why-there-are-myriad-instructional-levels-within-each-grade-level/

From the link on “Mastery Learning,” which is included within the above link, are these words:
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“All students do not master curriculum concepts at the same rate. This is the result of many factors. -Some students have higher IQs than others. -Some have dysfunctional family environments which may cause an inability to focus. -Some have learning disabilities. -Some have mental illness or emotional problems. -Some have physical impairments. -Generational poverty can effect the ability of some students to learn.”
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As I mentioned above, not all educators are aware of the degree of variation of instructional levels within students on each grade level. Since variation in I.Q. is one factor which might cause some students to be behind others, on a given subject in a given grade level, would you wish to create a situation whereby those children might further hindered through cutting financial resources to their parents or guardians when the real reason for the problems that those particular students might be having in school has not been fully analyzed and understood even by their teachers or parents? As I had posted earlier, the long-ranged answer to educational and societal problems is enlightenment and education – for all concerned. This is what I have found to be true in my educational experiences in educational leadership with parents, students, teachers, and administrators in schools of 800 (elementary/middle school) and 1,800 students (high school) in a 35 year period of time.

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@DecaturParent “It is not unreasonable to expect a parent on Welfare to make sure their children are in school.”
The current law already does so…this article is about NEW requirements…
Current law says parents or guardians of children who are receiving benefits can lose 20 percent of those benefits if a child does not attend school. Campfield’s bill adds a new requirement that the child make “satisfactory academic progress” as well and raises the penalty to 30 percent of benefits.

Look, I can understand where legislation like this comes from… I consider myself a “liberal” but that does not mean that I do not get frustrated when I have to teach a child whose welfare mother has six other children, all from different fathers, who takes absolutely no interest in her children’s education, and only shows up at school to scream and blame everyone else when one of her children gets into trouble for misbehaving. Yes. I gets my blood pressure up, indeed.

However, this measure is too simplistic, for not only would it punish said mother, it would also punish her children who didn’t ask to be born into such a dysfunctional environment. In addition, it would be damaging to families of slow learners, LD students, ESOL students, etc. Some children work very hard in school, but just cannot make the progress of classmates due to language barriers, learning difficulties, undiagnosed learning or medical conditions, or low intellectual ability. Such children may strive to do well, but their grades (if they are not artificially inflated) will reflect performance, not effort, and thus, may be too low to satisfy Campfield. Not all children live in Lake Wobegon (Garrison Keillor shout out).

Plus, you add additional pressure on teachers, who now would have to be burdened with the knowledge that if they were to give a student the failing grade he/she earned, they might well be denying that child a roof over his/her head and food to eat. Anyone else want to make that call?

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@Bootney and td:
I am a stubborn, free-thinking, moderate independent who knows that the best ideas come from the center, not from the lunatic fringe of either party. Please don’t try to paint me as a bleeding heart liberal. I’m speaking out currently against the far-right idiocy because here in Georgia, that’s what we are dealing with on a daily basis. If I lived in California, I’d be speaking out against the big-government liberalism that’s pushed that state to the brink of bankruptcy. I get so sick of people entrenching themselves at either end of the fringe and being too ignorant to understand that the common ground is where the solutions lie.

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@SHAR “Parents, to say nothing of siblings, cannot be held accountable for their child’s success in school.”

Um, whaaaaaaat!?!?!?

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@ Mary Elizabeth – I apologize for over-simplifying your approach/accomplishments over the course of your career. That was not my intention per se. Rather, my intent was to suggest that many of our education system’s problems could be better addressed and solutions more quickly implemented by putting more responsibility on our parents instead of our teachers. I am not necessarily advocating the Draconian system suggested by the TN state senator. However, I wonder if there could be a way to incentivize some of those parents whose children are a continual drag on public education? I am not a teacher. Perhaps it’s impossible. From my view, our current system isn’t working. As others after me posted, the problem is considerably complex. I just think there must be a way to change the cycle of dependency that currently exists in our society.

When I was 17, I held a job as a valet parking attendant. The job wasn’t particularly enjoyable to say the least. One day I remember lamenting the trials and tribulations of the job to a fellow parking attendant. She and I were from different neighborhoods but became quite good friends during our time of employment together. As I remember, the discussion turned to what we could do to find a better job earning more pay and garnering more respect for ourselves. I talked about going to college. She talked about having babies as soon as she turned 18. Being the naive 17 year old I was, I inquired as to why. She explained it to me. This is an example of the cycle of dependency I mention above. There are some who would like to believe this idea is mythological. To those I dare say — baloney.

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@Responsibility, parents cannot make their kids have good grades/scores unless they are capable of doing the work themselves (and I have known several who have taken that tack). Parents have no immediate control over the quality of their child’s teacher, the level of professional development he/she has had, the level of funding of their individual school, class size, availability of tutoring, books and supplies, enrichment, curriculum, other needy kids in the class that take the teacher’s time and attention, their own child’s IQ — all of these things and more affect the child’s in-class experience and performance. The parents’ brief is to get their child to school ready to learn, which means on time, rested, fed, healthy, with their homework done and knowing that they must behave appropriately. It is also a parental job to insist that homework be done, and to show up at school to augment the taxpayers’ investment in their child’s education with their own efforts, both as volunteers and in discussing progress with their child’s teacher as needed.

They cannot be held accountable for grades. They can be held accountable for readiness, conduct and follow through. And one sibling cannot be held accountable for another’s academic success.

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@Sen. Campfield — Thanks for the prompting to “look it up.” I did. I also read SB132 (current session), so I know exactly what you’ve proposed. Here are some things I found:

The concept that’s been so successful, especially in Mexico and Brazil, is called Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT). The most studied version of such a policy is Mexico’s Oportunidades program, which has been around (counting it’s precursor program, Progresa, since 1997). Brazil’s Bolsa Familia program, itself an outgrowth of previous programs, has been around since 2003. Similar pilot programs have sprung up worldwide, including Opportunity NYC, a now-complete, three-year trial targeting six of the poorest areas of New York.

All programs share one key component: they’re reward oriented. Performing a desired parental behavior (getting your kids vaccinated, making sure they have preventative care appointments, getting them to school consistently) generates extra cash for the parent (in nearly all cases, programs targeted mothers explicitly). Families in extreme poverty also received a base benefit that was not action dependent. Structurally, then, these programs are the opposite of what you propose, in that you’re proposing a static benefit program with a single punitive rider — “If your children don’t do X, we’ll take away some of your base benefit.”

That approach, it seems to me, IS reinventing the wheel. The CCT works by incremental cash transfers that can build a substantial benefit. It’s a micro-carrot approach. You’re offering a stick instead of a carrot, and you’re tying a big stick to a single action. Although, using the fuzziest of behavioral definitions, one can probably squint and see a similar outline to your proposal and, say, Oportunidades, to claim that “this is already being done in over 40 countries” is a raging misrepresentation of the truth for any definition of the word “this” that passes the smell test.

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beanster, 12:06 pm

Eleanor Roosevelt did not look at the poor from the vantage point of judgment from above. She involved herself directly in the tenements in NYC, and as a young woman, Eleanor brought her future husband and cousin, Franklin, with her to work with the poor in those tenements, for their betterment.

In the course of my 70 years, I have seen society turn away from valuing developing programs to help those in poverty as happened in the 1960s, with LBJ’s “War on Poverty,” to valuing looking after one’s self primarily and making money for one’s self, which has become a primary national obsession since the 1970s, imo. Along with these personal monetary goals, ideologues fostered the political goals of cutting government to the point that it would have little effect in helping to uplift those in impoverished conditions in our nation. Poverty tends to be generational unless educational intervention occurs which helps to change this unfortunate situation. It appears to me that many today are content simply to stand in judgment of poorer citizens, instead of desiring to help to them, as did Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, in their era of America’s history.

From a historical perspective, slavery existed in our nation for over 200 years – until 1860. Slaves were not even allowed to learn to read. Thereafter, Jim Crow laws enforced a poorer quality of education upon African-Americans, as well as forced a segregated life, without economic or cultural possibilities, upon the poorer black citizens. I began my teaching career in the last of the segregated schools in Georgia. I was the only white person in the all-black school. The year was 1969-70. That means that Jim Crow, in reality, only ended in 1970 in Georgia – 110 years after slavery was abolished, and only 43 years removed from today’s world. That was only two generations ago. We cannot change dependency (which was built into the national dynamic of this nation, itself, with slavery) in only two generations. However, we can “roll up our sleeves” and know that it will take “a village of caring citizens” and not just parents (who have often been victims, themselves, of generational poverty and its demoralizing effect on hope for a better life) to change society for the better and make it more equitable for all citizens. Victims of poverty sometimes think there is no hope for them because no one cares – or even sees – what they endure. We need balance, once again, in our nation. Government CAN be an agent to help alleviate much poverty and illiteracy. I believe in helping to instill self-reliance in others, not through punishment or through undue judgment, but through opportunities which a good, solid education will give the poor, along with the inspiration to improve their circumstances through educators who care for them and who believe in them. Poverty knows know single race of people and it is one of the main reasons for the poor quality in our schools because of such inequities among students. We must start to attack poverty, once again in our nation, instead of incessantly attacking our public schools.

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Correction to my 4:01 pm post: Slavery existed in the U.S. until 1865 (not 1860) when the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery throughout the U.S.

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When a society comes together to solve a societal problem, they should start with the end in mind and enact strategies to get there. Our tax system is full of these ideas; we want more home ownership, so we give a home mortgage deduction on taxes. Sometimes there are unintended consequences, that until the law goes into effect, do not become apparent. The current welfare system was well intended in the beginning. It was to be a short term fix to help a family get back on its feet. The unintended consequence is a whole underclass who are content to live on the welfare of others rather than work to take care of themselves. We need to look again at the end result society wants: self supporting adults taking care of any and all children they bring into the world. The strategies we have put in place are not only not working, they are actually exacerbating the problem. We need to stop the current system and try some new strategies to get the end result we want: self-supporting adults who parent their own children responsibly. It may seem cruel to talk about reducing or stopping welfare payments, but it is actually more cruel to allow this dependency and lack of initiative to continue generation after generation. Asking someone to take care of themselves implies that you have confidence that they can take care of themselves. Treating someone with pity and condescension implies you have no confidence that the person can care of himself. Which is actually more respectful of the human dignity in each person? Work builds self esteem, confidence and is its own reward. Rather than welfare checks, we should offer employment to everyone. All but the most severely disabled should contribute to the general welfare in some beneficial way every day.

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Mary Elizabeth, I always respect your posts. Tell me what you think about this, please. Women couldn’t vote until after the turn of the 20th century and were and are still discriminated against; yet, women outnumber men in college and often graduate at the top of their classes, much more than men who have always had access to education. I find these facts contrary to your opinion that Jim Crow and slavery is still holding back black Americans. Please comment if you care to.

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Dr. Monica has once again drilled down to the root of the problem and given us a solution — focus on the kids. We can’t change the parents. Focus on the kids and what I want to add is — the sooner the better — identify the kids with no support or little support at home when they are in Kindergarten and intervene all the way until they can care for themselves. We can’t keeping depending on parents because bad parents won’t change.

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“While those two legs are important, one other leg has proven to be more important…We have done little to hold them accountable for their child’s performance.”

On this point the Sen. is unequivocally right. If this isn’t the right bill, that does not detract from the fact that this conversation NEEDS…TO…HAPPEN!

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The rural system I taught in, in TN had 25 percent of the student in Special Education…I thought 10 percent was more average……

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As a democrat I’d be opposed except that I am also a high school educator that has seen the number 1 problem I personally face on a daily basis is trying to get students from a poor socio-economic condition to actually complete their school work. I would certainly support such a program providing the school systems could give the parents a waiver if the child truly was trying in the classroom but still came up short. There are a few instances where a child truly is trying and completes homework but just can’t grasp the content required by to pass Georgia EOCT’s especially those that are SPED. But unfortunately the majority of failing classes is simply a lack of effort and when the parents are contacted nothing is changed. Indeed many parents today blame the teacher for students failing to do their work…

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This is punishment-based policy, the only incentive mechanism is negative- the parents just lose money. It is an example of the teranny of low expectations AND saving taxpayer money on the backs of the poor. Try the other way- reward success. Start with basic TANF benefits. Add dollars per month for: staying in school, completing each grade, passing competency exams, engaging in school volunteerism, etc. the State of Tennessee should consider it an investment in this population.
Suggesting it should work because of 40 other countries’experience only has the appearance of validity. This seems like typical conservative, reactionary thinking. It isn’t even a nice try, except politically.

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I was a very stressed out child being raised by an abusive drug-addicted father. My mother managed to hold our family together with the help of public assistance. So much of our family’s burdens fell to the children to managed. My siblings and I learned to fend for ourselves, look after each other and survive–because we were pretty much left on our own. Out of the four children, two of us have managed to graduate from college; one is in the US AirForce; and the youngest is a long-haul truck driver. None of us have had run-ins with the law and we are all productive members of society. But putting additional burden of the family’s survival on our shoulders would have broken me as a child. I think you have to walk a mile in the children’s shoes to truly grasp the kind of stressors they have to deal with. Don’t add to their burden. Children can’t help whom they are born to.

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what? and take away their child’s right to fail? sarcasm intended

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Making it more difficult for a family to survive will not help create a better home environment for struggling students. Republicans again attempt to prey on the weakest and least influential in society. We should base politicians pay on how successful they are at lowering the state jobless rate and improving education. How much can the state be hurting if we taxpayers can afford to fund a $150k crony job.

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Anyone who thinks this is a good idea is just a horrible piece of garbage. You SOB’s would actually get a good nights sleep knowing that some family (IN THE UNITED STATES) is starving because their child’s grades aren’t up to your standards. Good southern Christians I bet you are.

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Great Idea!

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So, in a nutshell, they’re going to put pressure on the child to succeed in order to put food on the table…Okay, it’s only fair that, folks making over 250K, if their kids have failing grades, we raised their taxes…IJS!!

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Sorry but if you don’t get your kids to school = no welfare money. Get up off your @ss and work, just do something- anything- get your kids to school at least.

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This Senate Bill 1312 does not make any sense….The Republican want to cut, cut, cut more benefit to balance there budget…Hey, I have an idea….State Sen. Stacey Campfield of Knoxville, stop given yourself a pay raise….

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Breaking the generational poverty barrier is one key to less government. I love the idea, but I am not so ignorant as to believe it is all positive. Many have mentioned the pressure it would put on kids which cannot be understated, but I think that is the backbone of this problem.

As I was growing up my parents PUT pressure on me to make good grades, knowing full well they could not afford to send me to college. I knew that if I wanted to go to college I would have to get a scholarship, float a loan with ridiculous rates, or try to work full time to pay my way thru. Many parents just don’t grasp that some pressure must be put on kids to achieve.

For those of you who are against this because it will cause pressure on the kids I say this .. welcome to real life. Does it stink, yep, but it happens to most middle class and below families .. well, at least it did before HOPE was around.

I seriously do not understand how the media and those supporting government handouts consistently assume that the tax-paying public had easy street all their lives. Sure, some families have been middle class for a few generations (there were few during the great depression), but they got that way by pressure and by not falling into a pattern or repeated bad decisions. Why do most middle-class families have fewer than three kids? They know that more would be hard to support. Ask yourself why lower income families do not recognize this. Is it because the middle and upper classes are forcing them to have more children than they could ever think to support on their own.

There are no easy answers, but buying votes by increasing the reliance on government handouts is not the answer. You can bet that is THE biggest reason one party props up these programs and if you think otherwise you are just not living in the real world. The best idea is to give people the tools to get off the government handouts, but the hard part is finding a good method. At least one party has an interest in doing this, even at the cost of votes. I am not sure if this is a good idea, but it’s much more worthy of a shot than oh say .. Obamacare .. which is forcing companies to drop full time employees and insurance on people who actually try to earn a living by working.

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Sounds like a good plan to me, pretty soon there will be a whole lot of people off of welfare.

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@point/counterpoint…..lol. u miss the point. Ur point is tangental.

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So the kid has a learning disability and you cut his family’s benefits back so he goes to bed hungry at night. Yessireee, that sounds like a perfect solution to me.

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While this could work for some it is definitely not for all. For sure this article is another divisive ploy it does show how the impoverished keep paving their own path. The big problem I see with implementing it is depending on teachers to be the backbone and allowing them to give the grades. With how we see other teacher led things being handled
ie: Atlanta, how can we trust that they will fairly grade students. Look at the HOPE and how many unqualified students have walked out with free money only to do nothing with it.

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This will not work, the parents could care less about the education of their children just as long as they get their EBT cards. They will just have more kids to compensate the loss of their income. This country has created a moucher class that will not change unless you reduce the benefits they receive. obama will not allow that reduction. obama wants his low informatin voter moucher to keep the democrats in power. Tie the benefits received to drug testing and some basic work that they must do ever month to continue to receive the stollen money from us workers.

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Mentally challenged people tend to be poor … or politicians.

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So the solution that some propose is….spend more money to TRAIN PARENTS?? Gawd, we are doomed!

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What penalties will parents that are not receiving “benefits” get if their child is not making progress?

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The biggest problem I have with this idea is that so much of what makes these kids lag happens before they even hit kindergarten. If a kid starts out behind, they often stay behind. Holding a child accountable for whether or not they were read to, talked to, lived in a stimulating environment, and attended some form of preschool seems to put pressure in the wrong place. I would love to see parenting classes required from birth in order to receive assistance. Kids who begin with the right foundations, with parents who nurture their academic growth from the beginning, are much more successful in school. I would also rather see the money tied to job training or volunteer service on the part of the parent-make them work for the money. I’d also hate to see kids abused by their parents because of bad grades. The parents clearly don’t know how to support their children’s education to begin with, so I fear there would be a lot of reactive rather than proactive behavior regarding grades and school performance.

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I teach at the high school level. While parental support is appreciated, I’ve learned to not depend on it. Lack of parental support has many dimensions. Poor parenting has little to do with income status.

If I don’t have parental support it does make my job harder, however, it doesn’t make my job impossible.

Has the senator considered the increase in paperwork/red tape this will create?

What is the timeline for improving grades? What is the timeline for cutting off or reestablishing benefits? If a child’s benefits are cut off after a semester of high school, does he/she have to wait an entire semester for the benefits to be reestablished?

Does anyone in politics ever look at the entire picture? Or, do they simply enjoy handing out simplistic “fixes” that appeal to a certain segment of the voting population?

Wait….I already know the answers….silly me. What was I thinking!

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I have a JD and cannot begin to teach, let’s say math, to a child. I took those classes 30 years ago and have no reason to re-learn those skills. Yet you want the poor to have these skills with some sort of incentive pay. And for what it’s worth, Georgia has gotten rid of most of welfare payments already so we will likely latch onto any idea that can rid welfare of the remaining recipients.

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Great idea! Anything anyone can do to get these blood suckers off of the proverbial government teet. I say drug test all welfare recipients, make them show proof of actually going out and looking for a job (signed applications etc), do random check ups to see if their free government money is being spent on the light bill and food and not 40 oz, dime bags and lotto tickets. You can’t take money from the people who create jobs and give it to the lazy self entitled moocher welfare class forever, eventually the well is gonna run dry.

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I wonder if Campfield and his privileged colleagues would support a bill requiring high-income families to pay 30 percent more taxes if their kids don’t make satisfactory academic progress?

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I don’t think this measure is totally the right approach. It does have some merit in the regard that the parents should be held accountable for ensuring their children are attending school. Making the parent accountable for ensuring their children;s grades improve is really pushing the limit. First of all, the parent may not have an adequate education themselves. I think there should be some incentive for parents to be educated. When parents are educated, then they will place a greater value on education for their children.

I think the place to start is to ensure that all parents who are receiving this aid are given the opportunity to get educated themselves first.

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So, basically, punish poor people for being poor. Cute. Kind of reminds me of the lottery, which I call the poor man’s tax, or tricking poor people out of their grocery money.

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sorry- transportation

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I think this is a WONDERFUL idea, my younger siblings 9 of them all dropped out. Why because it was allowed by the parental units who have a made a living off of the Federal Government. Now of that 9 , three have gone on to improve themselves get their education in some cases even go to college and become business owner. Please understand this was with little or no encouragement from the parental units. Had a bill such as this been in place maybe all of them would have obtained at least their HS diploma and not be drawing unemployment,social security,welfare et al. The problem is they grew up thinking this is the norm,now as 42-53 year old adults they are teaching their children my nieces and nephews that this is okay,this is how the real world works.

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Oh Bob, when the republicans bring back the debtor’s prisons and then concentration camps for those they consider “undesirables”, I’m sure you’ll be right there looking for a job as an administrator. You sound like you’d be great at stoking the ovens.

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More proof (as if we need any more) that the only infinite force in the universe is republican stupidity.

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The prevalence of eugenical discourse in this thread is deeply disturbing. The idea that poverty is somehow genetic, which is the implicit claim underlying all of the “Sterilize the poor people!” posts, isn’t just unscientific, it’s un-American. That whole “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” bit of the Declaration makes plain our national tenets on socio-economic mobility. Sure, it took us a while to get around to acknowledging in law that “all men are created equal” actually meant all men, not just white guys with property. Then we figured out that maybe women were fully human, too. But the foundational principle was clear from the get-go.

I’m going to avoid being “that guy” in this discussion — the one who confirms Godwin’s Law — but in this case it’s pretty difficult not to see the parallel.

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Smash the guy’s idea if you want; rightfully so even. But on the macro level, you can’t get away from the fact that the three legged stool works better than the two legged stool.

What we have now is a bunch of educrats calling loose stool sound educational policy, then blaming the teacher when it fails.

Jim Wooten used to say the single best educational reform we could come up with is stabilizing the 2 parent family. Didn’t agree on a lot from him, but on this one it’s hard to find an argument-again, individual exceptions apply, but on the macro level I think he was spot on.

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How about let’s link ALL parents’ ability to claim a deduction for their child on whether the kid behaves in school, whether the parents come to meetings, etc. THAT would help everyone!

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I have no faith in humanity on the Internet to read the comments on this story. Just wanted to put that out there. Bye, folks.

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Sounds good in theory, but if put in place it would just lead to more cheating.

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I think there are more than 3 legs to the stool: Parents, teachers, students, schools and their systems, AND STATE LEGISLATORS and federal entities, such as Congress. And the Department of Ed. We might throw on local taxpayers also. Each of thse helps stabilize the stool.

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The way businesses are going there won’t be any jobs in the country so, of course, they need to kill off as many people as they can. This idiot also said the following: Campfield is also well known for his controversial remarks about homosexuality. In a January 2012 interview with Michelangelo Signorile, he stated “most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community – it was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall…. My understanding is that it is virtually – not completely, but virtually – impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex…very rarely [transmitted].”[28][29] He later quoted the odds of heterosexual vaginal transmission at 1 in 5 million.

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I find it reprehensible that benefits of this type would be tied to academic performance. While it is true that parental involvement is a positive influence on academic performance is not dispositive of it. To believe otherwise is to believe that the SINGULAR cause of a child not making academic progress is lack of active parental involvement or support. It also does not reconcile with the fact that many children excel in the total absence of parental involvement. No matter what guise anyone uses to support this proposed legislation, there is a fundamental and abhorrent disregard for the most important and precious aspect of the legislation – THE CHILD. Can anyone fool themselves into believing that in the event a family’s benefits are cut that the child will not become ultimately aware that it occurred as a result of his/her academic performance? Is anyone truly that naïve or just that callous? Are the psychological, emotional or social ramifications of that impact on the child to be ignored? Indeed, what is ultimately revealed through this proposal is that Republican State Sen. Stacey Campfield of Knoxville is not representing the interest of the most precious of his constituents – the children of Tennessee; he is terribly short sighted and is equally naïve or extremely callous. Shame on him.

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How ’bout we dock politician pay depending on their attendance, honesty and I.Q. level.

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If our ultimate goal is to stop generational poverty and free children to live a better life than their parents, what we are doing is not working. What we are doing now is producing generational poverty and dependence on government assistance. We need to try something different if we really care about the dignity and worth of each individual and want to believe that every American has a chance to live the American Dream. The current system has many unintended negative consequences on families, children and society as a whole. We need to stop the current welfare system; it isn’t working. And increasing the amount of benefits is definitely not the answer. We need to help adults gain self respect and self reliance. Anyone who can work, should work. Parents should be responsible for any children they bring into this world and be responsible for raising them to be responsible citizens. The current system fosters the opposite goals.

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