Today, I want to congratulate Columnist Wendi C.Thomas' on her article this week. She is what I call a journalist who does not mind putting sweat equity into her work to help make us think! On February 5, 2014 in the Commercial Appeal she wrote:
"If Gov. Bill Haslam’s Tennessee Promise plan, which would give free tuition to any two-year state school for high school graduates, sounds familiar, it should.It already exists. It’s called tnAchieves, which is in 27 counties, including Shelby County.What would his proposal, which was greeted with bipartisan cheers during his State of the State address Monday, give Shelby County’s students that they didn't have?Nothing..."
The Governor is presenting an idea that could take money from the Hope Lottery Funds and give it to children that may wish to attend a two-year institution. Really, it's not new money. Rep. Steve Cohen warns us that this may leave the Hope Scholarship Funding in a less stable position. It may, and the Governor needs to address how he sustains both. But, who can debate the need to bolster attendance for some students in two-year or trade institutions? I won't. Every high school graduate does not want to attend college and trade schools offer real opportunities for lucrative incomes. For goodness sake, my mother was a teacher, but my father was a barber who owned his shop, a cafe, and pool hall with a 6th grade education. His trade and business sense made him the sexist man in town for my mother.
According to a Carnegie Mellon University Study poor people spend more of a percentage of their income on lotteries because they see it as a way out of poverty.
"Although state lotteries, on average, return just 53 cents for every dollar spent on a ticket, people continue to pour money into them — especially low-income people, who spend a larger percentage of their incomes on lottery tickets than do the wealthier segments of society. A new Carnegie Mellon University study sheds light on the reasons why low-income lottery players eagerly invest in a product that provides poor returns.
In the study, published in the July issue of the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, participants who were made to feel subjectively poor bought nearly twice as many lottery tickets as a comparison group that was made to feel subjectively more affluent. The Carnegie Mellon findings point to poverty's central role in people's decisions to buy lottery tickets.
'Some poor people see playing the lottery as their best opportunity for improving their financial situations, albeit wrongly so," said the study's lead author Emily Haisley, a doctoral student in the Department of Organizational Behavior and Theory at Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business. "The hope of getting out of poverty encourages people to continue to buy tickets, even though their chances of stumbling upon a life-changing windfall are nearly impossibly slim and buying lottery tickets in fact exacerbates the very poverty that purchasers are hoping to escape.' "
We are at a crossroads in this community in shifting a cultural mindset with our growing struggling poor. We have to develop real opportunities for a substantial number of people to help a generation realize that the "real lottery" ticket is education, training and a work ethic that values building a career. We need to help so many visualize that they probably won't win the lottery. And guess what? Our princesses will likely not become Beyonce, but they can own or design for an apparel industry, become an entertainment promoter, part of the camera crew and/or engineers. We have to help a generation of mothers realize that there is not a DNA sample hookup that will guarantee you a little King James on the Basketball Court. However, he can enjoy sports photography, writing, analyst, or becoming a school coach.
That's why the funding of educational programs is so critical. We need more students graduating from college in four years, rather than five to seven years. Delays in graduation dates, discourages students and many will quit with college debt that they can never pay. We need more students attending two-year opportunities that will lead to careers or a thirst for higher education. And we need them to start valuing education at the PreK level and sustain that energy all the way to higher education. Most importantly, the student must take responsibility to his desire to succeed. We must help students make goals and objectives and learn how to reach them. Even if it's to their own "applause".
But, what the Governor has also offered us is a program that is already in place for students in Shelby and 28 other counties.
This happens all the time and the newsroom rarely picks up on it because they take the press release or conference at face value and gives it to us without investigating or asking questions. That's not what Wendi C. Thomas did, though. She let us know, "Hello! Shelby, and 27 other counties already have a program similar to TNPromise called tnAchieves, so what are we getting that's new for Shelby?"
Not a thing, unless we "out fox, the fox". I don't know if it was by design or not, but it offers us an opportunity.
Here is my suggestion. The tnAchieves program is mostly funded by a foundation with major gifts from private sources. These corporate giants were trying to meet an unmet need for Tennessee's youth. Well, let's allow the State of Tennessee to meet the 2-year college need for all 95 counties, including Big Shelby. Then, ask tnAchieve to change its focus and consider using their dollars for PreK an unmet need that may lose some current funding. Then, we get both programs.
Come on Chamber of Commerce and Mayor AC Wharton, Jr. here is an opportunity to get funding for a serious priority in our community that the State will not expand. And, we get it without a sales tax increase.
City and County governments should collaborate and find out how much money would tnAchieve generate and if it can supplement PreK for those 27 communities. Then, ask the Governor if with the private support would he participate in acquiring the PreK federal funds for those 27 participating counties.
I know this is a lot of Government Relations work, but it may be worth it for our community. It could be a win-win for all our children from PreK to trade or a college degree.
P.S. Publicize these programs and hold guidance counselors accountable for students to opt in or out of them. People in my family knew nothing about tnAchieve. But, I did because I remember when it was formed.
And since our Governor will not participate in the federal Pre-K or Affordable Healthcare Programs, we need our Congress to suggest more competitive grants for those programs that may be accessed by County or City Governments, rather than the State. I refused to accept a stumbling block to stop access to education and health care. Tennesseans deserve those services.
Carnegie Mellon University
https://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2008/July/july24_lottery.shtml
