Shut Out

Low Income Mothers and Higher Education in Post-Welfare America

Valerie Polakow, Sandra S. Butler, Luisa Stormer Deprez, Peggy Kahn, Valerie Polakow, Sandra S. Butler, Luisa Stormer Deprez, Peggy Kahn

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780791461266, 9780791461259
• eBook ISBN: 9780791484975
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Higher Education
• Index: Social Sciences

Documents the economic, educational, and existential struggles that single mothers in poverty confront in the current welfare climate.

Shut Out portrays in vivid detail the economic, educational, and existential struggles that single mothers confront as they fight back against a welfare-to-work regime that denies them access to higher education and obstructs their aspirations as autonomous women, determined to exit poverty and attain family self-sufficiency. The book is a unique blend of policy analysis and lived realities. The voices of student mothers fighting to stay in school, and organizing for a different future, are embedded in an analysis grounded in the educational experiences of women in poverty across the states. Harsh and punitive public policies that are designed to keep poor women trapped in low wage work are juxtaposed against the actions of those who, together with their allies, have resisted-inspired by a vision of a different world made possible by higher education.

Contributing authors discuss the provisions of the 1996 "welfare reform" (PRWORA) Act and the myriad of statewide responses to educational options within the framework of national legislation. In documenting the multiple obstacles and policy restrictions that low income women face, the book also highlights successful state programs, institutional practices, and community-based programs that afford low income women educational opportunities. The afterword summarizes recent legislative developments and makes policy and advocacy recommendations for the future.

Table of contents

• Shut Out
• Contents
• Introduction by Peggy Kahn, Sandra S. Butler, Luisa Stormer Deprez, and Valerie Polakow
• 1. Debunking the Myth of the Failure of Education and Training for Welfare Recipients: A Critique of the Research by Erika Kates
• 2. Failing Low Income Students: Education and Training in the Age of Welfare Reform by Lizzy Ratner
• 3. “That’s Not How I Want to Live”: Student Mothers Fight to Stay in School under Michigan’s Welfare-to-Work Regime by Peggy Kahn and Valerie Polakow
• 4. Connecting and Reconnecting to Work: Low Income Mothers’ Participation in Publicly Funded Training Programs by Frances J. Riemer
• 5. Supporting or Blocking Educational Progress?: The Impact of College Policies, Programs, and Practices on Low Income Single Mothers by Sally Sharp
• 6. Student Financial Aid and Low Income Mothers by Donald E. Heller and Stefani A. Bjorklund
• 7. Credentials Count: How California’s Community Colleges Help Parents Move from Welfare to Self-Sufficiency by Anita K. Mathur with Judy Reichle, Julie Strawn, and Chuck Wiseley
• 8. “This Little Light of Mine”: Parent Activists Struggling for Access to Post-Secondary Education in Appalachian Kentucky by Christiana Miewald
• 9. College Access and Leadership-Building for Low Income Women: Boston’s Women in Community Development by Deborah Clarke and Lynn Peterson
• 10. Transcending Welfare: Creating a GI Bill for Working Families by Julie L.Watts and Aiko Schaefer
• 11. Securing Higher Education for Women on Welfare in Maine by Luisa Stormer Deprez, Sandra S. Butler, and Rebekah J. Smith
• Afterword by The Editors
• Contributors
• Index