Winter 00/01 (v4#3)

Learnfare Falls Short

By Autumn Barbosa

The Learnfare program may have come in with a bang, but it certainly went out with a whimper. At the outset of implementation, there was a fierce ideological debate over the merits of the program. Critics argued that Learnfare was a program that unfairly targeted and penalized poor children and families, while Learnfare proponents maintained that the program would improve the school attendance of children on welfare and went as far as to say that the program would sever cycles of dependency.

At the end of it all, the ideological battle was settled by the numerous problems that plagued the implementation of the program. As of this school year, New York parents on public assistance can no longer be financially sanctioned based on their child’s school attendance record.

Learnfare, a state-mandated initiative "to encourage school attendance," was enacted by the Legislature as part of New York’s Welfare Reform Act of 1997. Families with children enrolled in first through sixth grade were targeted. Under the Learnfare program, if a student on public assistance accumulated three unexcused absences in a quarter, the child was to receive counseling to prevent further absences. If a child accumulated five or more unexcused absences in a quarter, a family’s welfare check would be docked $60 a month for three months in the following quarter. Governor George Pataki first proposed the initiative in 1995.

This school year, the Learnfare program was slated to move out of the pilot stage and into statewide implementation. However, due to a lack of support, Learnfare died quietly this summer when the Legislature failed to reauthorize the bill that would have continued the program until 2005.

"It [Learnfare] was politically popular with a lot of people," said Susan Antos at the Greater Upstate Law Project, "until they realized that it was an overwhelming requirement."

"Everybody Wins"?
The EPP Monitor first reported on the Learnfare in the spring of 1999 as selected districts were in the midst of implementing pilot programs. The very first Learnfare program had been implemented in Wisconsin in 1988, targeting high school students, aged 13-19. The Monitor stated that evaluations of the Wisconsin program did not show improvements in attendance and that, "a state-contracted 1992 study showed a decline in attendance by two-thirds of urban participants from 1998-91 and an increase in the number of dropouts."

Despite the evaluations and studies of the Wisconsin experience, New York State fashioned its own modified Learnfare program. There was a perception that the failure of the Wisconsin program was due to the fact that they were dealing with "different, harder kids … high schoolers… kids that were harder to control," said David Ortiz, former Learnfare coordinator and management analyst for the Family Independence Center of the NYC Human Resources Administration.

Instead of targeting high schoolers, New York State’s program focused on elementary school children. "With Learnfare, parents were supposed to be more likely to take their child to school so everybody wins," said Ortiz. "Everybody anticipated that everyone’s lives would be improved."

However, according to Ortiz and many others, New York’s Learnfare program ended up "a lose, lose situation. Whoever designed it didn’t think it through," said Ortiz.

The Plan
In 1997, New York’s Learnfare program began as a pilot program in New York City and three upstate counties. In September of 1998, six more counties were added, and the following September the program was scheduled to be implemented statewide, according to the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (ODTA).

In the pilot districts, parents of children receiving Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) were sent a letter asking the parents to sign a release waiving their right to privacy under the federal educational privacy act. If parents refused to waive their right to privacy, their benefits could be terminated.

Most social service agencies said that they did not close cases after the initial letter was sent, and most said they worked with parents to explain how the program worked. "Most [parents] felt that they were being penalized for being on public assistance," said Margaret Regan, associate commissioner of the Office of Temporary Financial Assistance in Westchester. After working with families, Regan said that most parents in her district signed the waiver because they said their children attended school and the sanctions would not apply to them.

The Learnfare initiative stated that if a child on public assistance accumulated three unexcused absences in a quarter, the child was to receive counseling. If a child received five unexcused absences, the child’s family was sanctioned and $60 was deducted every month for three months in the following quarter. In the quarter following the quarter in which the family was sanctioned, a family was reimbursed only if the child had no further unexcused absences.

Social service agencies were to work with their corresponding school districts in providing the names of children on the TANF roles. School districts were responsible for tracking children’s attendance and reporting back to social services in a timely manner. The agency charged with providing the counseling to children varied. That is the way the program was supposed to work.

Implementation Issues
The Board of Education (BOE) and the Human Resources Administration (HRA) were charged with implementing the Learnfare pilot program in New York City. Both agencies said that the first year of the program ran rather smoothly.

In NYC, the first year targeted three schools, which were already receiving Attendance Improvement Dropout Prevention (AIDP) funding. This state level funding is allocated to schools with below average attendance rates. The schools targeted by the Learnfare program were already focusing on improving attendance, which meant that these elementary schools had a guidance coordinator and attendance outreach workers.

The schools "were able to reach out to families and find out what was happening. We were doing it anyway. The change was that they honed in on the kids that HRA identified," said AIDP Director Robert Diaz at the BOE Bureau of Attendance. "At the outset, we thought we’d be advocates."

Although the year ran smoothly, there were "issues." School level staff had to spend considerable of time with "Learnfare families." "A lot of paperwork and documentation was involved," Diaz said. After each reporting period, the schools would have to generate a list of students with three or more absences. They would then have to generate another list of the services provided to each child. If the counseling was not documented, the child could not be sanctioned. Another list had to be generated of children that had perfect attendance but had been sanctioned in the previous quarter (so that the family could have the deducted money reinstated).

Out of Compliance
The attendance lists were available a week and a half after the quarter was over, according to Diaz. He said he tried to give parents an extra week for "clean up."

However, the HRA complained about the length of time it took to obtain attendance information. "The BOE did have the attendance monitoring, they needed to pursue issues of attendance … but there was little technology for the level of monitoring and the follow-up required by this program," said former HRA Learnfare Coordinator Ortiz.

There were systematic and organizational problems within the Learnfare stipulations. Ortiz said that it was impossible to sanction families in the timeframe set forth in the law. "For example, case A would require a reduction in the following quarter–the BOE defined this as a marking period–not a set amount of weeks…We were getting information on kids attendance a month after the quarter had ended so we ended up having to sanction in the following quarter," Ortiz said. The HRA almost never was able to implement a sanction in the following quarter, Ortiz added.

"It was unfair to everyone involved. It was unfair professionally. It was unfair to parents. You should subscribe a punishment clearly with dates and timeframes," Ortiz stated.

There just was not enough money to properly implement Learnfare, according to Ortiz. "There was never a per capitalization rate, which means that they never took into consideration how much it was going to cost to monitor the program and exchange the information, Ortiz stated. He said that, initially, the BOE agreed to provide the attendance data, "but when they realized the immensity of it, they started balking."

The Learnfare pilot program was extended to three more schools with AIDP funding during the second year of the NYC pilot program. It was during the 1998-99 school year that the BOE ceased complete responsibility for the counseling component of the program. Diaz said that the logistics became overwhelming. "Some outreach workers were sent to homes not on welfare. Sometimes a brother was targeted and a sister was not. The BOE had to deal with those parents," Diaz said.

The BOE knew that the program was scheduled to expand to schools without the AIDP resources in place during the third year of implementation. The BOE also knew that they did not have the resources in place in non-AIDP schools to deliver the mandated counseling services when the program went districtwide. "We did what we could. We kept telling HRA that we could not do the counseling." Diaz said. According to Learnfare’s stipulations it is the ultimate responsibility of the social service agency to deliver or hire a contractor to deliver the counseling services. Towards the end of the second year of the pilot program, the HRA assumed the counseling oversight role in some of the pilot schools, although the AIDP back-up support services were still available, according to Diaz.

The Final Year
During the third year, the program was supposed to be implemented throughout the entire NYC school system. Because of recurring unsolved problems, the city did not expand the program and continued the six-school pilot program.

Shirley Whitney, the HRA Learnfare coordinator during the 1999-00 school year, detailed these problems in a written statement to EPP. "Elements essential to systemwide implementation included identifying eligible children, tracking attendance, and providing the mandated counseling services, as well as developing the means to track and report these elements electronically using disparate HRA and BOE systems. Each element proved to be problematic."

There were problems identifying children for the program. Sometimes there were differences in a child’s name in BOE enrollment information and the same child’s HRA enrollment records. Students switched schools and children’s public recipiency status changed.

According to Whitney, the Board stated that they did not have the "capacity" to enter the excused and unexcused absences data that the program necessitated for the entire New York City school system. And lastly, although the HRA and BOE did not agree on the specifics, the problems surrounding the provision of the mandated counseling services was a another factor in the decision not to expand the program to all the schools teaching grades one through six as planned. While working out the problems of implementation last school year, HRA did not sanction any children or terminate benefits for failure to enroll, according to Whitney.

Outside the City
The Westchester Office of Temporary Financial Assistance was matched with more than one school district. Associate Commissioner Margaret Regan said that they had been developing a web-based system to track attendance. She said that the program had never been fully implemented. If the Learnfare bill had been reauthorized, it would have been implemented fully in the 2000-01 school year.

In dealing with the school districts, Regan found challenges in getting the school districts Learnfare coordinators comfortable with the program. "The schools were not in favor of it, it was just another thing to do," Regan said. She added that there was no lead from local school districts to participate wholeheartedly.

In New York City, there was a similar sentiment among school staff on the front lines. "The people implementing the program did not like it," Diaz said. They had to deal with many agitated parents and "there was a lot of abuse of school-level staff on the front lines," he added.

In Monroe County, Department of Social Services Learnfare Coordinator Shelley

Usiatynski was disappointed when the Legislature did not reauthorize the Learnfare program. In 2000-01, the Learnfare program was scheduled to expand to the entire county. In 1988, Monroe County implemented a pilot Learnfare program in the Rochester school district. Rochester is the largest district in the county, and it has the overwhelming concentration of the county’s children on public assistance, Usiatynski said

The Department of Social Services was able to establish a good relationship with the Rochester school district, according to

Usiatynski. The school district conducted the counseling, and "the school district liked the program. They could increase attendance staff. They could address more issues … contact more parents, and a lot more information was brought to light," she said.

Unlike New York City coordinators,

Usiatynski said that funding was not a problem. "We were a pilot program, we got a chunk of money our first year … our Legislature authorized whatever the state did not give."

There were 45 schools participating in Learnfare from the Rochester school district. A total of 11,824 children were eligible for the program in 1998-99, and 9,422 students were eligible in the 1999-00 school year. Of these students, 99 families refused to sign the privacy waivers that would enroll them in the program and had their benefits terminated as a result.

"The only people who didn’t like the program were the line staff, the front line people," Usiatynski said. "Implementing the program was a burden on them."

Although Usiatynski gave overwhelmingly positive feedback about Learnfare, she said that Monroe County experienced a few problems complying with the stipulations of the program that she described as "frustrating." The attendance reporting was good, but it could have been faster, she said. Only 20 percent of sanctioned families were sanctioned in the quarter following the unexcused absences, according to Monroe County. The majority of the students, 80 percent, were sanctioned two quarters after the absences occurred, a practice that is out of compliance with the law.

Learnfare appeared to have no effect on certain patterns of students’ unexcused absences in Rochester schools. There were "a lot" of students that would accumulate three unexcused absences and receive counseling, Usiatynski said. Those children would not accumulate five absences that quarter, therefore avoiding counseling, but would repeat the pattern the next quarter.

Monroe County is planning on continuing to target the children identified through the Learnfare, specifically the families that were targeted two or three times. The program would continue the counseling aspect of the Learnfare. The new program, Transition to Educational Responsibility, will have not have any of the punitive sanctions that were part of the Learnfare program. The county plans to fund the program though a TANF block grant.

Learnfare’s Legacy
Without a full evaluation, it is unclear as to whether the program accomplished its goals and to what degree. Although Monroe County coordinator Usiatynski felt the program was a good one, she could not substantiate that the program had any significant effects on elementary schoolers attendance. "The numbers were not huge in terms of attendance," she said. But she felt that after a few more years her county would see a difference.

In Westchester, a web-based attendance tracking system had been developed but the county had not fully put the program into place when the Legislature failed to reauthorize the program. Other contacted counties said that they had no information to share, because the information had been boxed up when the program was terminated.

"I think it [Learnfare] was a bad decision from the start. It didn’t work in any state it was tried. Now being politically punitive is not popular. There has been a change in the way people speak about welfare recipients," said Cathleen Clements, director of the Office of Public Policy and Client Advocacy at the Children’s Aid Society.

In New York City, former BOE Learnfare Coordinator Diaz said that there was no way to ascertain how effective the program was because the pilot schools were already receiving AIDP funding. He said that one of the effects of the program was to put the Board in an adversarial position. "It was an onerous task," he said. "The Board of Education’s role is to educate. We are trying to trying to build bridges.

"School is very important," he added, "but there is a carrot, and then there is a club…"