We are so excited to announce the release of our new video from Stone Soup Films! With your help, we are using strategic investments to create economic security for women and girls in the Washington region.
Great change is possible – when we make smart investments in our community. Please share this inspiring new video with your networks!
I’ve had the amazing opportunity to be a volunteer teacher at Washington Area Women’s Foundation’s Grantee Partner, The Academy of Hope, and can speak to the hard work of the learners who step through their doors each day. This innovative organization provides basic education to adult learners. Though most learners have jobs, families and a myriad of other responsibilities that compete for their time, they still make their studies a priority. In spending time with the learners there, I’ve come to see that the value of a GED or high school equivalency diploma goes beyond the increased job opportunities and higher wages associated with obtaining that level of education (though these are extremely important). Their value is also in the confidence gained by the adults who walk across the stage at graduation, in a mother who is more equipped to help her children with their homework, in that member of society who is more prepared for civic engagement and in immeasurably more ways. In January of 2014, however, the GED is undergoing significant changes that will likely make it considerably more difficult to obtain.
While there are several changes coming to the GED, three of the most significant shifts are the transition from paper-based tests to computerized-only exams, the jump from a $50 testing fee to a fee of $120, and an increase in the test’s difficulty. These changes have been widely debated, and Academy of Hope has been tackling the tough questions around this transition through a series of panels and continuing dialog on this issue. Most recently, they hosted local experts for a panel discussion on July 17th, in partnership with the Moriah Fund and PNC Bank, to discuss the implications of the changing GED for DC adults.
The panel raised several great issues, discussing the challenges and barriers that the changes to the GED could mean for adults looking to pass the test, and balancing these with comments on the need for the GED to remain relevant at a time when many jobs demand higher levels of computer literacy and “soft skills” such as listening, critical reasoning, and inductive reasoning. For me, one of the most relevant comments came from Nicole Smith, a research professor and senior economist at the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University. She noted that her research has shown that women need an entire layer of education higher than men to obtain the same salary, meaning that when a woman obtains her GED she would still need at least an associate’s degree or certificate just to earn what a man with a GED alone would be able to earn; women with the same educational attainment as men earn about a quarter less than their male counterparts over a lifetime. For the new GED, with the increase in difficulty, greater need for computer literacy and higher financial burden just to take the test, women will face an even more difficult road to higher education and family sustaining wages.
In a city where, in 2008, 14% of girls did not complete high school, the ramifications for this are serious. The GED test is the most widely recognized alternative to a high school diploma and a gateway to higher education opportunities. The changes to the GED will likely increase the time commitment of adults studying for the test, and will mean a tremendous amount of work for organizations that prepare adults in the Washington area for the GED, as they will need to revamp and adapt their programs to the new standards. At the panel discussion, NPR’s Kavitha Cardoza remarked that with the coming changes in the GED, “this is a really scary time for adult educators and adults in DC.”
As the barriers to higher education for women in the region increase, so, too, do the barriers to better jobs and more opportunities for women and their families to find economic security. This is why The Women’s Foundation funds programs like Academy of Hope and appreciates their commitment to continuing the conversation with great events like this panel!
For more information on what the changes to the GED could mean for area adults, click here for a policy brief courtesy of The Working Poor Families Project.
You can follow Academy of Hope as they continue the discussion on twitter at @AoHDC and on Facebook.
Photo courtesy of Columbus State Community
I was born and raised in Ghana in a society where, traditionally, a woman’s role in the community was limited to motherhood. Only a few had the audacity to transcend social expectations and affect the lives of other women around them. My grandmother was one of them.
I saw my grandmother lead and inspire. I saw a great teacher who devoted her life to transforming the lives of young women in her community. As the leader of the women’s group at her local church, Naana, as everyone affectionately called her, became the mother many people wished they had. She counseled women of all ages with various life issues – some coming from low-income households, single-mothers, and teenage mothers. For them, she offered hope. As a young girl, I could hardly understand what she talked about, but I grew up with a constant reminder of the smile that wiped the tears off the women’s cheeks and carefully tucked it onto my memory.
My grandmother took care of her family and worked as a volunteer pastor. And though she had no formal training, most people considered her a teacher and a counselor. I became convinced that hers was the most important profession; no matter how informal the setting, she was still very effective. My grandmother’s counseling sessions did not end in her makeshift office at the church premises. Women in our neighborhood sat next to her for hours in my family’s living room. She prayed with those who needed prayer, she shared her Christian faith and offered hope. Some women needed to learn vocations like cooking, sewing and handmade crafts. My Naana taught them all of that and so much more.
As a young girl, nothing made a bigger impression on me than my grandmother’s ability to connect with other women from different ethnic and tribal backgrounds, social and academic statuses, and with religious differences. When I was old enough to understand the wisdom in her words, I found out how the best teaching moments are in sharing one’s life lessons and the wisdom gained from those experiences. Also, Naana not only shared lessons learned, through her connections she helped some of the women gain apprenticeships and work with local traders who found their skills very valuable, thereby helping them gain economic security. For them, this teacher didn’t only impart knowledge to them; Naana had given them a lifelong desire for hard work and dignity. Most importantly, she had given them hope.
Since joining Washington Area Women’s Foundation, I’ve learned that there are many Naanas right here in our community. They teach every day. They inspire in every moment. They challenge us all to commit ourselves to our vocations – any vocation – and give it our best effort. They give us the audacity to believe in our own futures, and to contribute to the community around us. They validate the Ghanaian proverb, “Obi nnim a, obi kyere,” which means: “If one does not know, another man teaches him.”
My grandmother’s work and impact were all the more impressive because she was redefining her role in our community and getting other women to think about theirs, too. My mother, for instance, opened her own business, a story that I shared last year on International Women’s Day. And as it turns out, Naana was ahead of her time. Now, when I go back to visit Ghana, I’m amazed by all of the progress. The women I grew up with are lawyers and engineers in addition to having families – or choosing not to. We are Naana’s legacy; the result of her investments in our community.
Mother Teresa once shared her thoughts about seemingly insignificant actions: “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.” My Naana understood her value even as a “drop”. The Women’s Foundation celebrates the value of women like my grandmother Naana. We celebrate the commitment that women all over the world make to positively impact someone else’s life in spite of their own challenges.
Julliet Boye is the development associate at The Women’s Foundation.
Top reasons working families should claim the EITC in 2013 – and that policymakers should protect and strengthen it
Article written by the National Community Tax Coalition
The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) represented nearly $60.7 billion in help for almost 26.5 million low- and moderate-income, working households in 2012. But about one in five EITC-eligible taxpayers fails to claim the credit, missing-out on valuable assistance in covering their families’ most fundamental expenses. Below are 13 of the many reasons that families should ensure they obtain the EITC for which they qualify – reasons that also illustrate the significance of policy efforts to maintain and strengthen this crucial tax credit.
Recently, Congress voted to retain key improvements in the EITC and other key tax credits for working families, but only through 2017. Congress must continue to prioritize these credits throughout federal tax-policy discussions in 2013 and beyond. Similarly, state governors and legislators should support families’ well-being in their own, state-level policy discussions – protecting and improving such credits in states that already have adopted their own versions of the federal EITC, and creating such state credits where they do not yet exist.
It’s important to remember that the EITC:
1. Reflects hard work. The credit is available only to taxpayers who work and have earned income.
2. Helps families to cover their basics. Groceries, rent, and utility bills are common uses for families’ EITC dollars. Another frequently-cited expense: car repairs, to help family breadwinners with the transportation necessary to get to and maintain their jobs.
3. Is particularly important to households with children. The amount of the credit is greater for families who incur the added expenses of raising kids. And this EITC assistance was responsible for keeping an average of 3.1 million children out of poverty annually from 2009-2011.
4. Is typically needed for only temporary stretches of time. Families only use the credit until they can get back on their feet. Indeed, among EITC filers studied between 1989 and 2006: 42 percent claimed the credit for only one year at a time, 19 percent retained it for two straight years, and only about one in five kept the credit for five or more consecutive years.
5. Helps struggling families who already pay a significant amount in federal taxes. In fact, the poorest one-fifth of Americans paid 8.3 percent of their incomes in payroll taxes in 2009, compared with the wealthiest 1 percent of households, who paid only 2.5 percent of their incomes in payroll taxes. And among those Americans who owed no federal income taxes in 2011, about 93 percent were either workers who still owed federal payroll taxes, elderly, not working due to illness or disability, or students.
6. Helps struggling families who also pay a significant amount in state and local taxes. In 2011, the poorest one-fifth of Americans paid 12.3 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes, while the wealthiest 1 percent of households paid only 7.9 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes.
7. Lifts more families out of poverty than any other federal policy. The EITC kept an average of 6.1 million people out of poverty annually from 2009-2011, and reduced the effects of poverty for another 21.2 million people.
8. Strengthens families’ health outcomes. The EITC is associated with decreases in maternal smoking and increases in infants’ birthweights, according to research.
9. Bolsters students’ education outcomes. The EITC is associated with increases in kids’ math and reading test scores, studies show.
10. Boosts the economic strength of local communities. As families spend the money they save through the EITC, small businesses benefit. In fact, studies have shown that one EITC dollar – spent at the local level – generates as much as $1.50 to $2 in economic activity for the area.
11. Is important to rural Americans as well as those living in other areas of the country. In fact, a higher percentage of rural tax-filers claimed the EITC in 2007 than did urban filers.
12. Helps families to begin or improve upon savings. Many families strive to set-aside some of their EITC to work toward long-term goals or to brace for emergencies. One survey found that about 39 percent of households receiving the credit devoted about 15 percent of their EITC refund dollars to savings.
13. Has historically enjoyed bipartisan support. The EITC was designed during the Nixon administration, established during the Ford presidency, and improved by bipartisan majorities of Congress working with Presidents Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama.
Content was produced by the National Community Tax Coalition. For more information, please contact Sean Noble at 312-630-0259 or visit their website at https://tax-coalition.org/.
An election, volunteering, a new logo, historic events, and opportunities to learn more about the needs and lives of women in our community. 2012 was a very busy year at Washington Area Women’s Foundation and much of it was captured on our blog. Here are our favorite blog posts of the year:
# 10: A Lot Left Unsaid at Presidential Debate Donna Wiedeman, executive assistant to the president of the Foundation, took the presidential candidates to task after the second debate when they failed to talk about Americans living in poverty and safety nets for low-income women and children.
#9: A New Look for The Women’s Foundation In this post, Foundation President Nicky Goren shared her excitement about unveiling our new logo and tagline, “Stand Together. So She Can Stand on Her Own.”
#8: The Women’s Foundation Supporters Volunteer on the MLK Day of Service Nearly 100 volunteers joined us as we helped A Wider Circle (a Foundation Grantee Partner) prepare donated items for families in poverty on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service.
#7: International Women’s Day – Celebrating the Impact of Women on the World Our Development Associate, Juliet Boye, shared how her mother’s entrepreneurial spirit in Ghana inspires Juliet’s work at the Foundation.
#6: Low-Income Women & Their Families Can’t Afford a Gender Wage Gap In this post, Nicky shared why working to “close the gender wage gap is part of ensuring that every woman and girl has the opportunity to reach her full potential and help her family and community thrive.”
#5: Food Stamp Challenge Foundation staff and other community members took part in the Food Stamp Challenge, spending a week learning how difficult it is to live on a food stamp budget – $30 per week. They reflected on the challenge in a series of blog posts.
#4: Closing the Achievement Gap for Students Begins Before Kindergarten After being extremely disappointed to learn about new educational goals for students based on race, I wrote to encourage educators to work on closing the achievement gap early on, so students and school districts won’t have to play catch-up later on.
#3: When the Clock is Ticking, Support Networks Become Lifelines for Working Parents Vice President Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat wrote about support networks that make all the difference to moms trying to juggle work and family.
#2: Witness to Olympic History Nicky recalled fulfilling her lifelong dream of attending the Olympics and how exciting it was to witness women’s history at the 2012 Olympics in London.
#1: Walk in Their Shoes How does safe, reliable transportation impact low-income women and their families? Walk in the shoes of a single mom who showed us her shockingly long commute in this short video.
A growing number of states, including Virginia, are opting out of mandates set by the No Child Left Behind law and in the process creating new goals for students that are sparking great controversy. NPR reports that Virginia has set “new education goals that are higher for white and Asian kids than for blacks, Latinos and students with disabilities.”
According to Virginia’s board of education, the new standards are based on students’ previous test scores in reading and math. Historically, minority, disabled and impoverished students have scored lower than their white, Asian, and wealthier counterparts on standardized tests and thus will be held to a different standard. Proponents of the plan say it will give underperforming students a chance to catch up. Critics argue that the practice will lower standards for minority students and won’t narrow the achievement gap.
Efforts to close the achievement gap need to happen long before students take their first test. According to researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, 37 percent of children enter kindergarten without the skills necessary for learning. And once they get behind, it’s incredibly difficult for them to catch up. Research shows a correlation between quality early care and education (ECE) and high school completion. Some studies even track the benefits of ECE into adulthood.
Access to high-quality ECE for all children is an effective tool that Washington Area Women’s Foundation is using to help close the achievement gap and put our community’s youngest residents on a path to prosperity early in life. Nationwide, investments in ECE will help mitigate the need to lower the bar for some students in the future and make for a better prepared workforce in the long term.
To learn more about The Women’s Foundation’s investments, please visit our Early Care and Education Funders Collaborative pages by clicking here.
In New York City this week, NBC’s third annual Education Nation summit was held, featuring three days of panel discussions with the nation’s leading experts on education, including former and current secretaries of education, educators, and policy makers. A lot of great resources, including case studies and videos are posted on the Education Nation website, and I’m still working my way through them. There’s one topic, however, that I’ve been searching for and haven’t been able to find yet – a discussion on the impact of community colleges on low-income students.
It’s a topic that’s been at the forefront of my mind in the past few weeks – ever since the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, when both Ann Romney and Michelle Obama talked about the costs of college. Romney spoke about how much more difficult it is in the current economic climate to save money for college. The First Lady recalled being “so young, so in love and so in debt” from student loans when she and President Obama were first married.
Given those facts, I think that it’s important to have more conversations about the far less terrifying alternatives out there than tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt. Community colleges often offer affordable options for students for whom massive loans may not be a possibility. In addition to being lower in cost, community colleges provide adult learners with the skills and credentials they need to improve their career and earnings prospects, or prepare them to spend a shorter time in traditional four-year schools.
Nationwide, the average annual tuition and fees at community colleges was just over $2,900; tuition and fees at four-year colleges averages about $8,200. Encouraging students, families and the government to invest resources into community college degree programs with career potential will open doors for students who may not have otherwise have pursued an education beyond high school.
According to the American Association of Community Colleges, these schools “are the gateway to postsecondary education for many minority, low income, and first-generation postsecondary education students.” These institutions are particularly valuable for women, who make up the majority of community college students (57 percent) nationwide. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research, a Women’s Foundation Grantee Partner, notes that for single mothers, “postsecondary degrees with high labor market value are especially valuable for ensuring family economic security and future opportunities for their children.”
And a local student summed it up best, telling The Women’s Foundation: “my daughter motivates me to finish college because if she sees what her mother has done then she will probably follow in my footsteps.”
Everyone seems to be in agreement that, these days, it’s important to have some sort of post-secondary education or additional training in order to sustain families in careers where there’s room for growth. However, there are multiple paths for getting there and not all of them lead to a mountain of student loan debt.
I, like many in the region, sat down to watch the President’s State of the Union speech last night. It’s an annual event that always engenders much anticipation (at least among the media pundits, political junkies, and those living in and around our nation’s capital), and this year was no exception. Many called it “the” campaign speech, kicking off the 2012 election cycle. Just a day before the speech, the White House said that the President would “outline his vision for an America where hard work and responsibility are rewarded, where everyone does their fair share, and where everyone is held accountable for what they do.” Economic fairness was lauded as this year’s theme.
As I listened to the speech, I thought about the work that we do at The Women’s Foundation and the intersection between the federal policies discussed and the reality that women and girls in our region face, and I was once again struck by the huge disconnect that we continue to see.
The theme of the speech—economic fairness—sounds quite simple and logical. The President spoke about how his grandparents contributed to a post-World War II “story of success that every American had a chance to share – the basic American promise that if you worked hard, you could do well enough to raise a family, own a home, send your kids to college, and put a little away for retirement.” He called this “the defining issue of our time,” saying, “No challenge is more urgent. No debate is more important. We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.” Who can argue with that? Hard to disagree with the logic, so why can’t we get there?
Ask anyone who is out in the community, working in the trenches, and they will tell you that it’s not easy. The issues facing our nation and our local community are incredibly complex and they didn’t just pop up overnight, which means that the solutions are not simple, one-dimensional responses, and the problems won’t be solved with a blink of the eye.
Take the President’s commitment to train people with skills that will lead directly to jobs and his call to cut through “the maze of confusing training programs.” Sounds like a no-brainer — of course we should train people with skills that lead to jobs; but just this past week we were once again reminded why something that may seem intuitive isn’t. WAMU aired a report investigating D.C.’s job training programs and detailed the disconnect between some of the programs that are receiving funding, the skill sets required for the jobs people were being trained for, and ultimately, the availability of these jobs. The example cited was the 4,000 people trained to earn a Commercial Drivers License and the 90 people who were ultimately hired by metro, the region’s largest CDL employer. How can there be such a disconnect?
Additionally, DC Fiscal Policy Institute, a Grantee Partner of The Women’s Foundation, released a resource map offering a snapshot of the city’s investment in workforce development over the course of one fiscal year. The map details more than 30 programs and services across a dozen city agencies. It’s hard to imagine how someone could possibly navigate the system in the best of times, say nothing about the worst of times.
As we think about the worst of times and the state of our economy, the President rightly devoted a great deal of his speech to jobs. And while he called for equal pay for women, the majority of the jobs-related portions of the speech focused on nontraditional jobs where women continue to be underrepresented and face numerous barriers to obtaining and retaining these jobs. Isn’t it time that we give equal weight and value to ensuring women are paid equal wages for equal work? Doesn’t that fundamentally fall into the economic fairness category? Are we ok with telling our girls to work hard and get a good education only to be paid 77 cents on the dollar?
Calling on every state to require that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn 18 is a commendable goal set forth by the President. There is no doubt about the importance of graduating high school and pursuing post-secondary education and training. Our research demonstrates the drastic earnings differential based on educational attainment. Women in this region who do not have a high school diploma earn just over $18,000 per year compared to women with a graduate or professional degree who earn over $70,000.
But it’s not quite as cut and dry as simply saying that we’ll require everyone to graduate. Are we prepared to tackle the myriad of issues that cause youth, particularly girls, to drop out of school? Generational poverty, family unemployment, violence, and teen pregnancy are just a few of the laundry list of issues that are at the crux of drop-out rates.
So how do we get there? Last night, the President reminded us that “no one built this country on their own. This nation is great because we worked as a team. This nation is great because we get each other’s backs.” Well, there is no better time than now for our community to pull together to ensure that the Washington region is a model community where economically vulnerable women and girls have the resources to thrive. Now is the time to work together toward innovative, multi-dimensional solutions that put women and girls on a path to prosperity. Let’s break the disconnect. Where would you start?
Jennifer Lockwood-Shabat is vice president of Washington Area Women’s Foundation.
Photo credit: WhiteHouse.gov
In this week’s roundup of news affecting women and girls in our community: We wonder what Dr. King might say about the high rate of poverty among women and girls in the DC area. The top five findings of 2011 from the Institute of Women’s Policy Research. The impact of Pre-K on the achievement gap. Is it time for a poverty revolution? Plus, a young, aspiring scientist is headed for a national competition as her family deals with homelessness.
— Ahead of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, Women’s Foundation President Nicky Goren visits the MLK Memorial and reflects on what Dr. King would think about more than 200,000 women and girls living in poverty in the DC region.
— The Women’s Foundation is inviting supporters to join us and volunteer at A Wider Circle on MLK Day. Click here for details.
— The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) — a Women’s Foundation Grantee Partner — has posted a list of their top five findings of 2011. Topics on the list include how women have fared during the economic recovery, the unmet child care needs of student parents and how much paid sick days would save taxpayers.
— East of the River Magazine explores the innovative work of AppleTree Early Learning Public Charter School. The article also takes a look at the impact a quality Pre-K education can have on the achievement gap. AppleTree is a Women’s Foundation Grantee Partner.
— “In the fight against poverty, it’s time for a revolution,” David Bornstein writes in a commentary on The New York Times website. Bornstein calls for re-defining poverty, restructuring how social services are handled, and focusing on collaborative, long-term solutions.
— Here’s your feel great story of the week: a 17-year-old Long Island high school student whose family had to move into a homeless shelter a year ago is a semifinalist in the Intel Science Talent Search competition. Samantha Garvey says she doesn’t have the best home life, but she hopes that she made her parents proud by being one of just 300 students nationwide to participate in the semifinals of the competition. You can watch her story here:
With many kids in our area headed back to school today, we thought it would be a good time to re-visit some educational statistics that Washington Area Women’s Foundation shared in our most recent report 2010 Portrait of Women & Girls in the Washington Metropolitan Area (Portrait Project 2010).
The report found that our region is one of the most highly educated in the country – yet there’s a stark divide between those with high and low levels of education and that divide becomes even wider when race is taken into consideration.
Portrait Project 2010 looked into fourth graders’ proficiency in reading and math. The report found that the District is far behind the rest of the region and the U.S. overall in both reading and math. Girls are performing slightly better in reading and about the same as boys in math. But taking race into account once again showed a greater divide, with fourth graders of color lagging far behind their white counterparts.
Portrait Project 2010 also found that 10 percent of the girls in our region don’t complete high school. “Among girls of color, high school completion rates are especially low: African American and Asian girls are twice as likely (12 and 14 percent, respectively) as white girls (6 percent) to lack a high school diploma. And almost four in ten (37 percent) Latinas in our region do not graduate from high school (US Department of Commerce 2008).”
The lack of a high school diploma or other degree greatly impacts future earnings. Women with graduate or professional degrees have median annual earnings ($70,787) that are more than three times the earnings of those who do not graduate from high school ($18,283).
In spite of the obvious struggles that some students in our community face, women in the region have much higher-than-average educational levels; half have a bachelor’s or graduate degree, compared to a little more than a quarter of women in the U.S. overall.
So how do we bridge the gaps and ensure that all girls in our region are on a path to prosperity? Portrait Project 2010 highlights the importance of starting early, pointing out that quality early care and education can prepare children for later grades and increase their chances of finishing high school.
Portrait Project 2010 also shows that 26 percent of girls who drop out of high school say pregnancy or parenting was behind their decision to leave school without a diploma. Providing young parents with innovative opportunities to finish school while receiving child care supports may ensure that young mothers have better opportunities to provide for their families.
The report also points to community college and job training as additional ways to help women earn the skills and credentials they need to improve their career and earnings prospects.
Portrait Project 2010 has some valuable lessons about ways we can use educational attainment to improve the lives of girls, women, their families and our entire community. Here’s my back-to-school wish list for our region:
Do you have a back-to-school wish list for the girls in our community? Tell us what’s on your list in the comments below. And for more details you can read the full Portrait Project 2010 online by clicking here.
