Workforce and Family Program: Latest Articles

How Can Republicans Repair Their Brand?

Cecille Isidro — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 09:58:00 -0500

When I worked in brand management at Procter & Gamble in the 1990s, we learned about the importance of connecting to one's customer. Over the past five years, the Republican Party has lost touch with its voting customers and its brand is in need of repair.

Poll after poll throughout the 2008 election cycle showed that on the issues that mattered most to Americans, voters favored Democrats over Republicans.

One Nation: Religion and Politics 2008

Cecille Isidro — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:16:00 -0400

Faith in the Democratic Platform

It is interesting at the start of the Democratic Convention to note that the draft platform the delegates are beginning to discuss says more about what a faith initiative will not be than what it will be in an Obama administration.

I bet the GOP platform will be more positive. Not that the Democratic platform is negative. It is just less positive than one would imagine. This contrasts with Obama's rhetoric in July about his plans for a Council of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (as he will call it), though it does track somewhat his well-known 2006 Call to Renewal speech, which sought to show the complexity of faith and policy in America.

Below is the draft section on faith in the Democratic platform. It uses traditional language in praising the place of faith and its importance in solving problems in America. When it comes to specifics, however, the draft Democratic platform wants to make sure any faith-based initiative does not endanger First Amendment protections, does not allow proselytizing, does not allow discrimination (they main issue of controversy in Congressional debates on the issue), and is used on programs that actually work.

All these points are right and important. They show more concern from the Democrats about faith and government than the flowery language they have used in the past or than one would imagine in such a document.

Draft Democratic Platform Statement on Faith

We honor the central place of faith in our lives. Like our Founders, we believe that our nation, our communities, and our lives are made vastly stronger and richer by faith and the countless acts of justice and mercy it inspires. We believe that change comes not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up, and that few are closer to the people than our churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques. To face today's challenges -- from saving our planet to ending poverty -- we need all hands on deck. Faith-based groups are not a replacement for government or secular non-profit programs; rather, they are yet another sector working to meet the challenges of the 21st century. We will empower grassroots faith-based and community groups to help meet challenges like poverty, ex-offender reentry, and illiteracy. At the same time, we can ensure that these partnerships do not endanger First Amendment protections -- because there is no conflict between supporting faith-based institutions and respecting our Constitution. We will ensure that public funds are not used to proselytize or discriminate. We will also ensure that taxpayer dollars are only used on programs that actually work.

Democratic Outreach to the Religious Left

It is historic that there is a Faith Caucus at the current Democratic National Convention. The interfaith gathering last Sunday (August 24) and the events all week are diverse in terms of representing different religions, but not in terms of ideology, which is progressive across the faiths. The caucus panels are moderated mostly by Obama's director of religious outreach, Joshua Dubois, or by Jim Wallis, a principle architect of the religious left, which became politically active following the 2004 elections and formed Faith in Public Life, among other projects, to engage people of faith for the Democratic Party.

McCain Targets Catholics with Palin ... But Will It Help in New Mexico?

The selection of Sarah Palin as McCain's VP is by any estimate a very interesting pick. Her pro-life background should help McCain with blue collar Catholic voters generally. I'm starting to feel that this election comes down to who wins Colorado and New Mexico. Perhaps McCain flips New Hampshire. Certainly McCain must "hold serve" on more states than Obama to stay even, and that puts more pressure on him. If Obama gets momentum and starts flipping states like Ohio, Virginia, Nevada, or Florida, it's all over. It is less likely that McCain flips Democratic states like Pennsylvania or Michigan, but it is possible. I think it comes down to Colorado and New Mexico. Can two Westerners keep these GOP states? Can Palin's Catholic roots (she is reportedly a baptized Catholic) help with Hispanic voters in New Mexico? We'll see.

Who is Sarah Palin's Pastor?

With all the focus during the primary campaign season on the words of the candidates' ministers, whether it was Jeremiah Wright for Barack Obama or John Hagee for John McCain, one has to wonder when the press will start focusing on Sarah Palin's pastor. As a member of a conservative, evangelical congregation in suburban Alaska, there is a decent chance Palin was present for some controversial sermons from time to time. Much as Obama was hit with the content of Wright's sermons, one would expect Palin to receive the same treatment from the media in terms of her pastor's remarks.

Continuing the Investment

adminn — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 13:58:00 -0500

Deep Creek Elementary School is an education success story. In 2001, Deep Creek, where more than three-quarters of students come from low-income families and 80 percent are black or Hispanic, was one of the worst elementary schools in Baltimore County, Maryland. Its third-graders were reading at a first-grade level. But the new principal, Anissa Brown Dennis, expanded collaboration and professional development for teachers, implemented an aligned reading and math curriculum from pre-K through third grade, and offered summer learning and after-school programs for struggling students. Today, nearly three-quarters of Deep Creek students read on grade level, teacher and student morale is up, and the school has received local, state, and national recognition for its improvement. The key to Deep Creek's transformation: a clear vision of high-quality early education, starting in pre-K and continuing through third grade.

Advocates of universal pre-K are nothing if not visionary. They view universal pre-kindergarten as not just an end in itself but also a first step toward much more comprehensive public social welfare programs for preschool-age children and their families: prenatal care, parental leave, universal children's health care, and quality child care. For these advocates, the case for universal pre-K is also the case for new state-level systems, policies, and institutions that would serve children from birth through preschool.

Curiously, there's much less discussion of pre-K's potential to spur improvement in the schools children enter after they leave pre-K. The phrase "school readiness" is illustrative: If pre-K gets kids ready for school, then it's not school. As a result, school reformers focus on kindergarten through high school and stay away from pre-K advocacy, while early childhood advocates tend to focus on birth to age 5 and steer clear of school reform. That's a mistake. The universal pre-K movement isn't just about offering another social service: Pre-K advocates are actually building a whole new system of public education, and that has implications for the existing K-12 public education system. Without significant improvements in the public schools that children move on to after preschool, the pre-K movement will struggle to deliver promised results.

Research shows that high-quality pre-school has a positive impact on children's lives: Adult alumni of high-quality preschools have higher education attainment, employment, and earnings, and are less likely to be involved in crime than adults from similar backgrounds who didn't attend pre-K as children. Kindergarteners who attended good preschools also have stronger cognitive and academic skills than children who did not.

The trouble is, these academic differences disappear by third grade -- a phenomenon knows as "fade-out." That's fodder for conservative pre-K critics. During the 2006 debate over a referendum to establish universal pre-K in California, the Heritage Foundation, Reason Foundation, and other conservative groups published articles highlighting fade-out. The referendum failed. In an era of education accountability, politicians and the public expect preschool investments to improve elementary school test scores, so fade-out can undermine support for early education programs.

But evidence shows that fade-out is not a failure of pre-K; it is more deeply connected with children's ongoing education. Research by economics professors Janet Currie and Duncan Thomas has found that African American children who attend Head Start programs disproportionately go on to attend lower-performing public schools -- and this accounts for much of the fade-out in Head Start's academic results.

Rather than fearing fade-out, or trying to downplay it, pre-K supporters should highlight it as an argument for improving early elementary school programs. Education reformers and pre-K advocates should join forces to promote a comprehensive reform package that starts with high-quality, universal preschool for all 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds whose parents want it, followed by universal full-day kindergarten, to give kids more time to learn. In this vision, goals for children's learning and development -- including not just academics but also physical, social, and emotional development -- would be clearly articulated and extend from pre-K through third grade in a seamless progression. Lead teachers would all meet the same high-quality standard -- a bachelor's degree and demonstrated knowledge of how young children learn. This would allow teachers to work collaboratively across grade levels, so each year's learning builds on what children already know. (And ideally, talented preschool teachers without formal degrees would receive support and funding to pursue further schooling.)

The entire system would focus on ensuring children finish third grade with the skills they need to succeed in the next level of their education. Third grade is a turning point when children shift from learning to read to reading to learn. Children who can't read and do basic math well by then are unlikely ever to catch up. Indeed, proficiency by third grade is so critical that at least four states are known to use third-grade test scores to predict how many prison beds they'll need years later, reports the National Center on Education, Disability and Juvenile Justice.

Critics of the universal pre-k movement sometimes fret that pre-K advocates want to "extend public schooling down," to serve younger children for whom it's not appropriate. In fact, public education would actually benefit from extending some characteristics of high-quality early childhood programs up into public elementary and secondary schools.

This is precisely what happened at Deep Creek Elementary School and dozens of primary schools across the country that have implemented similar reforms. There, educators don't see preschool as just an add-on. Integrating pre-K and other early childhood programs with existing elementary schools can actually spur those schools to serve children better in the years following pre-K.

Let's look at the details: Most high-quality preschool programs focus on developing children's social and emotional competencies -- self-control, sticking with difficult tasks, resolving conflicts verbally rather than by force -- as well as academic skills. They build connections with parents and communities -- sometimes even using community-based providers to deliver early childhood education. They also often provide comprehensive services -- nutrition, health screenings, and parent education and involvement -- to address the myriad challenges that make it difficult for many children to succeed in school. These features are part of what make preschool programs successful, but too often they are woefully missing from elementary schools that are emotionally barren, devoid of resources to respond to the non- educational problems children bring to school with them, and disconnected from parents and communities. As advocates work to build publicly funded pre-K systems that emphasize social and emotional development, community connections, and comprehensive services, they're creating proof points that demonstrate how entire public education systems can deliver these things -- and why they must.

The universal pre-K movement also offers public education advocates and reformers models for academic reform. Changing existing systems is incredibly difficult; because states are building universal preschool systems from the ground up, there is more space for innovative thinking than in the established public education system. When it comes to evaluating the quality and effectiveness of schools and pre-K programs, for example, pre-K accountability systems use a much broader definition of quality than No Child Left Behind. Some use child assessments to measure pre-K learning, but they also look at resources and what actually goes on in pre-K classrooms: What kind of activities are children engaged in? How do teachers interact with children? A recent report from the National Early Childhood Accountability Task Force describes promising state and local models to evaluate the quality of pre-K programs. These models can help educators develop more nuanced ways to measure quality in public elementary and secondary schools.

States must also build new systems of teacher preparation and professional development to help experienced preschool teachers who lack a bachelor's degree meet new, higher education standards. Education reformers have long bemoaned the quality of K-12 teacher preparation and certification: Too often these programs fail to equip teachers with the skills to effectively teach diverse students, while their cost and time demands dissuade some potentially good teachers from entering the profession. New models to prepare preschool teachers could provide a potential leverage point for broader changes in K-12 teacher training.

Early childhood advocates and school reformers should be natural allies in building a better future for children, but too often they operate in separate spheres. The expansion of the pre-K movement, and the need to combat fade-out, create an opportunity to bridge that divide. By working together to build high-quality pre-K programs, education reformers and pre-K advocates can also open the door for improvements in the elementary and secondary education system. This kind of collaboration can make stories like Deep Creek's not the exception but the rule.

Serving Our Young Adults

Cecille Isidro — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:44:00 -0400

Many churches are developing programs to serve young adults. Many are investing in young adult coordinators in order to help grow their church.

However, there is another reason for churches to focus on young adults -- the critical needs of the early young adult population in our nation.

The violence at Virginia Tech last April perpetrated by a disturbed young adult is a tragedy beyond belief. It calls attention to the challenges faced by an often overlooked age group.

While American society has appropriately focused on the needs of teenagers in recent years, we should not lose sight of the needs of young adults as well.

The 1999 Columbine High School shootings were carried out by teenage students, Dylan Klebold, age 17, and Eric Harris, age 18, who shot a teacher and 12 students, and then shot themselves.

Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old from Centreville, Va., carried out a similar rampage at Virginia Tech, taking the lives of 32 classmates and professors before committing suicide.

The parallels symbolize what many in the research community see -- some of the same problems we used to worry about for teenagers are now in crisis mode for young adults.

Social researchers have recently pointed out that teens are getting into less “trouble” than they used to. Federal and state policies and changes in attitudes have helped reduce teen pregnancy by 31% since 1991. According to the Foundation for Child Development’s national Child Well-Being Index (CWI), violent crime involvement, teen pregnancy, and cigarette, alcohol and drug use among teenagers have fallen over the past generation. As a result, the CWI’s “safety and behavioral” indicator was 36% higher for teenagers in 2005 than in 1975. Dr. Ken Land of Duke University says that part of this improvement can be explained by increased protectiveness by parents who shield their children from risks.

While teen pregnancy rates may have fallen, there is a silent epidemic of an increase in unwanted pregnancies among Americans aged 20-24. According to Kelleen Kaye of the New America Foundation, “Childbearing by singles has grown by over one-quarter since 1990, and young adults account for roughly 60 percent of this increase. Births to young, single adults surpass even the ‘epidemic’ levels of teen childbearing, with 550,000 births annually (71 per 1,000 single women ages 20-24)."

While drug and alcohol use among teens overall has declined, binge drinking among college students puts vulnerable young adults at risk, and many young adults go through college unprepared for the behavioral challenges and pressures placed on them.

American parents have increasingly focused on protecting their teenagers. Many have kept their children away from the dangers of unsupervised activity through schedules and indoor programming. According to Dr. Land, this tendency to stay indoors has contributed to the epidemic of overweight children, but has kept them out of some trouble. However, children grow up in a world with lots of stress, and in their efforts to protect, parents must be sensitive to the additional pressures they may add.

It is enough to make us question how we protect and prepare young adults to deal with dangers they will face when parents and home churches are no longer there to help on a daily basis.

Are our families, schools, and churches sufficiently preparing our young people to make good choices when they leave the relative support systems of their homes and home churches? How do parents prepare their children to make good decisions when they leave the nest?

Can the pressure that parents put on teenagers to keep them safe and help them succeed lead to unintended emotional and behavioral consequences when they become young adults?

What are the appropriate supports civil society and churches should put in place once young people reach age 18?

Should institutions of higher learning find ways to better identify and address emotional, spiritual and mental health disturbance among young adults?

How can our churches help teach the values and guide their young adults so that they receive the critical care and decision-making skills that will serve them, the church and our nation?

How should churches reach out to universities and to young adult communities to provide them support?

The needs of our teenagers are great and America must make better efforts and investments to improve the well being of our children, including teenagers.

Yet young adults should not be forgotten.

There are concrete steps that churches can take to make a difference for this age group.

First, they can emphasize young adult ministry as a mission area in addition to being an evangelism field. Too often young adult ministry is seen as area of evangelism. Every mainline Protestant church that I know of is asking itself, “How can we attract more young people?” to help address declining membership. The assumption that young adults are well off and a group to be sought after by evangelism committees misses what research is revealing -- that young adult ministry is a mission field. Churches that look to support and meet the needs of young adults will be providing an important social function and are more likely to bolster attendance.

Secondly, the needs of young adults are significant enough to be considered at a presbytery level. There are a lot of best practices that young adult ministers have to share with each other and presbyteries would do well to bring them together to examine how the presbytery can leverage resources to best serve this age group. In our presbytery, we are planning a retreat next April to focus on the needs and interests of young adults.

Third, churches should follow up with their college age students when they leave for school. Many early young adults do not easily find a church home in college, graduate school, or during their early transient years. One Presbyterian church in Ohio sends food and letters to its college students to let them know they are praying for them and another holds a weekend get-away each year for its young adults who are back for the summer.

Finally, individual churches must invest in campus ministry. I know from my own experience with loss as a college student how valuable campus ministry can be to young people at critical times. Campus ministers at and near Virginia Tech responded admirably to the needs of students during the tragedy. For many young adults, campus ministers are often on the front lines of identifying needs and connecting young adults with help before a crisis occurs. At a time when support for campus ministry at a national church and at a presbytery level is being cut, those who minister to young adults on campuses depend on their local churches even more to keep their ministries going.

Chances are that your church is not far from some college or vocational school or graduate community that needs your support. The support of local churches for young adult ministries within churches and on campuses has never been more important.

Jesus said that if we make the tree good then the fruit will be good. By investing in programs that serve the needs of young adults, churches can extend branches of care that connect young adults to their faith roots in ways that can bear good fruit at a critical time.

Teach Your Children About Interfaith

Cecille Isidro — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 11:45:00 -0400

One of the great fears that parents and church leaders have about their youth engaging in interfaith dialog is that they will lose their connection to their own religion and will end up rejecting and leaving their faith, maybe even converting to another religion as a result. My experience as a Christian pastor has been just the opposite -- I have watched young people become stronger in their own faith through exposure to other traditions.

Personal relationships matter a great deal in influencing how individuals come to faith, switch faiths or grow in faith. Most of us are part of the tradition of our parents and stay in a tradition that comes to us through the personal relationships in our home and our place of worship. High school students often deepen their faith because of a role model. College students often grow in faith because a person of faith was there for them during a time of pain. Young adults often stay with their faith because someone they admire is in the faith.

In encouraging people to stay in their faith, actions speak louder than words. St. Francis of Assisi once said, “Preach always, use words if necessary” to convey the concept that we share our faith by what we do as well as by what we say. As a pastor I try to live the Gospel of Christ, who modeled how we are to live by his actions as well as by his words. Regardless of our tradition, the everyday personal interactions of people of faith have a great impact on others staying in their traditions.

When young people begin to look beyond their faith background to engage people of different faiths, personal interactions often cause them to consider their own tradition as never before. If we grow up in a world where everyone is similar, we too often think about faith in cultural terms without analyzing the doctrine itself. Interacting with people who are different can cause us to think more deeply about how our own identity is shaped and developed.

One of the benefits of interfaith dialog is that in order to explain our faith to others we must come to terms with what we actually believe, and that often brings us to a deeper place in our own faith. To explain one’s own faith requires synthesizing those parts of the faith that one believes in.

For example, Farah is a Sunni Muslim girl from rural Ohio. She attends a high school outside of Cleveland and is one of the few Muslims at her school. She is often asked what it is like being a Muslim. She says that in the process of engaging with non-Muslims and explaining her faith she has come to experience a deepening of her belief through her own reflection.

Sometimes conversations can cause people to develop a pride in their background that they did not have before. In college, I found that being one of a few from my region of the country meant that people often asked me what it was like to grow up there. I had assumed while growing up that everyone was like me. When I encountered people who were very different I began to think about my community in a new way. I developed a sense of pride. I saw myself as a representative of my state and region and it increased my feelings about, and loyalty to, my community. When we are engaged in conversation with people from others faiths we learn about ourselves and clarify our beliefs as we explain our religion and often we develop a sense of pride as a result.

A recent study by researchers in California and Canada found that older siblings often do better in school than younger ones because they end up tutoring their younger siblings. The process of tutoring helps the older students learn because they have to explain information to the younger ones. The researchers concluded that the key driver of success for those older students was the premise that humans learn by explaining.

I have seen, through interfaith dialog, that young people of many traditions who once did not care much about their religion before the dialog, suddenly become inspired by the commitments of others to return to the faith of their roots.

If parents and religious leaders want their young people to develop a faith that is deep in their tradition and broad in the world, they should encourage, not discourage, interfaith interactions. Faith that is tested, contrasted and explained is faith that is most likely to be internalized and to endure.