Most of the districts in our sample of 49 had in some way formally recognized the special needs of pregnant and parenting students, as shown in Table 2.1. For example, one district had established a task force on teenage pregnancy and parenting in the schools. Several districts had established dropout prevention programs that focused largely on pregnant and parenting students. In another district, a new, full-time, at-risk coordinator position was established. A key responsibility of this person was to conduct a needs assessment for pregnant and parenting students. In several districts, support was evidenced in the provision of transportation to pregnant and parenting students from their comprehensive high schools to a special center.
In districts without any formal policy recognizing the needs of pregnant and parenting students, staff lamented its absence. In one small district, the high school counselor noted that he and the teachers try to work out flextime arrangements for pregnant and parenting students, but are unable to provide any services directly because of the lack of any district policy or support. When asked what he viewed as the most sorely needed improvement in the school situation for pregnant and parenting students, this counselor stressed the need to establish some district policy which would allow staff to respond to pregnant and parenting students' needs. In another district without a formal policy, high school staff have initiated informal support groups for pregnant and parenting students but identify the lack of formal policy and resources as a major barrier to services.
A little over half (56 percent) of the districts we surveyed permit pregnant and parenting students to receive high school credit for enrollment in adult community education courses, a more liberal policy than one allowing only GED credit. Often, pregnant and parenting students (and particularly older ones) find such enrollments to be easier to accomplish than regular high school classes because most adult community education courses are offered in the evening.
| Prevalence | ||||||||
| Policy | Percent | No.a | ||||||
| Formal recognition of teen parent problems and needs | 7l | 47 | ||||||
| Teen parents get high school credit for adult/community coursework | 56 | 32 | ||||||
| Person responsible for teen parents formally designated | 55 | 49 | ||||||
| Nonmedical homebound instruction available to teen parents | 43 | 44 | ||||||
aNumber may be less than 49 because of missing data. | ||||||||
Just over half of the districts we surveyed had designated a person at the district level to be formally responsible for pregnant and parenting students. The designation of formal responsibility for pregnant students is related to district enrollment, with a formally designated person in every one of the largest twelve districts in the sample. Such a person was rare in the twelve smallest ones. When this position exists, its incumbent typically has other responsibilities besides pregnant and parenting students, e.g., director of pupil services. In some districts, several people have part-time responsibility for pregnant and parenting students and usually work together in planning and overseeing the pregnant and parenting program. In districts where no one is formally responsible for pregnant and parenting students, school nurses and guidance counselors often assume such responsibility informally. Because of the press of other responsibilities, their involvement is usually limited to referrals to outside agencies.
As shown in Table 2.1, just under half (43 percent) of the districts in our sample extend homebound instruction in the absence of medical indication to pregnant and parenting students; most districts make this service available if a doctor certifies that the student is unable to attend school.[28] Districts that do not provide homebound instruction cited a complicated certification process or high costs as reasons for its unavailability. In several such districts, a guidance counselor phones with homework assignments.
Our respondents often noted that teen parents prefer to be in school with their friends rather than on homebound instruction, although in more than one district homebound education was the service of choice for middle school-aged mothers. Respondents in districts with teen parent programs contrasted the limited educational focus of homebound instruction with the broader, more supportive goals of the pregnant and parenting student program and strongly advocated the latter.
It appears that nonmedically indicated homebound instruction may be inconsistent with other, more "modern" approaches to helping pregnant and parenting students. Our analyses revealed that nonmedically indicated homebound instruction is negatively related to other facilitative policies, such as teen pregnancy prevention efforts, and to formal recognition of pregnant and parenting students' needs. In the smallest districts, nonmedically indicated homebound instruction appears to serve as a substitute for other responses to pregnancy and parenting. It is in these districts that nonmedically indicated homebound instruction is most strongly and negatively related to other policies that may be more supportive, including use of adult community facilities (r = -Dfo1()0.50), and application for special funds for pregnant and parenting students (r=-Dfo1()0.41). Interestingly, in the smallest districts the availability of homebound instruction is also associated with the lack of a district-level person charged with responsibility for pregnant and parenting students, a relationship that does not hold across the districts taken together. It may be that in the smallest districts the lack of such a person, combined with lower numbers of pregnant and parenting students, has resulted in the continuation of an old policy and the absence of efforts to pursue new ones.
Two policies were repeatedly identified during site visits as having the potential to negatively affect parenting students: (1) attendance policies and (2) vocational education eligibility requirements. Strict attendance policies make school involvement difficult for teen mothers, since they generally have more absences; if such absences directly threaten success, such policies may reduce their inclination to enroll in or remain in school. Similarly, strict eligibility requirements for entry into vocational education programs may create a barrier to teen parent participation.
State-level attendance policies in four of the five states in which we visited programs limit the number of excused absences a student may have and still get credit for a course. In only one of these four states were absences related to pregnancy or parenting officially excluded from the count. In the other three states, several districts had found a way around strict attendance rules by creating district-level amendments for teen parents. In these districts, district and teen parent program staff were able to ignore pregnancy-related absences that otherwise might have caused teen mothers to lose credit for completed schoolwork.
In one district without a formal program, no official amendment to the state attendance policy existed. Instead, the 90 percent attendance rule was waived unofficially if it came to a counselor's attention that a teen mother was having parenting-related attendance problems. The unofficial nature of this policy meant that teen mothers either had to ask for help with attendance, or busy counselors had to notice a teen mother's spotty attendance record and be aware of her parenting status. As with most informal policy responses to parenting students, this one caused problems. Parents were sometimes not aware of the possibility of a waiver, and counselors did not always notice the problem in a timely manner.
In four teen parent programs, staff had set attendance rules that were actually more rigorous than those for other students. In three of these programs, attendance is stressed because a key program goal is dropout prevention; staff believe that emphasizing attendance will reduce the likelihood of dropout. In the fourth program, strict attendance policies are driven by the high demand for slots in the child care center. Staff in this program decided that if a teen mother does not attend regularly, her slot should be given to another mother.
Vocational courses and programs often establish stricter attendance policies than those of other programs. In some cases, these policies are designed to ensure that students accumulate the hours needed for state certification; they may also reflect vocational divisions' campaigns for increased credibility. Attendance inflexibility is also seen as a teaching tool: Many vocational education staff to whom we spoke regarded these policies as a key component of workforce socialization and an important lesson for future workers.
In three teen parent programs that we visited, program staff had worked with vocational education instructors to modify vocational education attendance policies for teen parents. In these districts, parenting-related absences from vocational education classes were excluded from absence limits. But these absences still counted against the hours needed for state certification. Local staff were unable to change these state-level policies. Most believed that as long as absences threatened certification, teen parents would be less likely to enroll in vocational education courses and programs, and would benefit less fully from them.
Vocational education attendance requirements may also inhibit participation in parenting activities. In two districts that we visited, students enrolled in vocational education programs are unable to participate in counseling groups or teen parenting program activities because the vocational education classes either do not allow them time off, or any absences count against them at the point of state certification.
Several of the teen parent programs that we visited offer enrollees vocational education at centers providing secondary- and post-secondary-level courses. These more advanced and technical courses often have eligibility requirements such as 11th grade reading and math abilities. Students in teen parent programs frequently cannot meet these eligibility requirements because of low academic achievement.
In only one district of the three we visited that had vocational education eligibility requirements had any effort been made to help teen parents meet them. In this district, the teen parent program coordinated with a remedial education program to help teen parents pass the eligibility exam. The teen parent program had also arranged for enrollees to begin coursework in their chosen vocational field at the local voc-tech center while they were simultaneously enrolled in remedial skills classes. The new Perkins Act provisions described in Sec. 1 may help school staff to deal with this problem, since programs are required to adapt to meet the needs of special populations.[30]
In each of our sampled districts, the telephone interviewer sought to determine the total number of programs for pregnant and parenting students currently operating in the district or in the school community. Interviewers coded programs into three categories based on their location and sponsor. The categories included: (1) comprehensive, separate site programs in which pregnant and parenting students interact only with other pregnant and parenting students; (2) mainstream programs in which pregnant and parenting students spend some part of their time with nonparenting students; and (3) programs sponsored by an agency other than the schools, e.g., the YWCA, that include school attendance as a program component. Informal efforts to support pregnant and parenting students or those at risk for parenting were included in a fourth category, labeled "other programs."
Interviewers identified 277 school-sponsored and nonschool-sponsored programs operating in the 49 sampled districts and their school communities, as shown in Table 2.2.[32] Most of the programs fell into the nonschool-sponsored and "other programs" categories. Nonschool-sponsored programs tended to be sponsored by community agencies such as the Y or the Junior League, or by long-time providers of services to this population, such as St. Anne's and Florence Crittenden Homes. The "other programs" category was dominated by dropout prevention efforts. In most cases, these programs were targeted to all students or to "at risk" students; teen mothers were included as part of the above groups.
| Program Type | No. of Programs | ||||||||
| Comprehensive | 20 | ||||||||
| Mainstream | 72 | ||||||||
| Nonschool-sponsored | 99 | ||||||||
| "Other" | 86 | ||||||||
| Total | 277 | ||||||||
Just 92 comprehensive and mainstream programs were identified. These relatively low numbers reflect a tendency in LEAs to limit the number of formal teen parent programs sponsored by the district. The number of comprehensive programs never exceeded two, with most districts having just one. However, in a number of districts, several high schools offered child care services to students. The existence of school-sponsored programs was related to district size. In 12 of the 19 smallest districts (enrollments below 5,000), there was no school-sponsored program. In seven of these 12 districts, no other program served teen mothers either.
In most of the districts we visited, the formal program or programs for pregnant and parenting students constituted the district's sole programmatic response to young mothers. Although district staff recognized that many teen mothers dropped out of school, and that others chose not to enroll in the program (or the program could not accommodate all those wishing to attend), these unserved mothers were by and large ignored.
All the districts supported the teen parent program to at least some degree. In general, district-level support included provision of funds and materials to the program, acknowledgment of the program and praise for its efforts, and supervision of program administrators. Nevertheless, district financial support for the program everywhere was insufficient to meet the diverse service needs the programs felt compelled to address.
No district counted or tracked teen parents. In spite of support for a special program on the part of these districts, individual teen parents remain statistically invisible. None of the districts was able to provide us data on the incidence of pregnancy, nor had they tried to discover the extent to which pregnancy contributed to the dropout rate.
We selected a total of 71 programs to survey in greater depth to learn about program operations and opportunities, as discussed above. Once interviews were completed and coding had begun, it became apparent that coding of the 25 "other" programs would not be meaningful, as many were not really programs at all, lacking as they often did a director, formal components, or program goals. Consequently, we chose to limit our analyses to the 46 comprehensive, mainstream, and nonschool-sponsored programs that had been interviewed in depth.
As shown in Table 2.3, most of the programs in our sample provided self-confidence building, parenting education, basic education, remedial education, and advanced academics to program enrollees. Most provided enrollees (and sometimes their babies) transportation. Most provided on-site child care to enrollees' children or some support for child care off-site. Some programs provided both, referring out when the on-site center was filled to capacity.
| Program Type | ||||||||
| Program Component | Comprehensive (No.=16) | Mainstream (No.=22) | Nonschool- sponsored (No.=8) | Totala (No.=46) | ||||
| On-site child care | 75 | 55 | 38 | 46 | ||||
| Other child care support | 40 | 71 | 75 | 44 | ||||
| Family planning | 81 | 71 | 25 | 45 | ||||
| Help getting welfare benefit | 86 | 85 | 88 | 42 | ||||
| Self-confidence building | 88 | 95 | 75 | 45 | ||||
| Transportation | 64 | 63 | 62 | 41 | ||||
| Case management | 88 | 86 | 38 | 46 | ||||
| Parenting education | 100 | 95 | 75 | 46 | ||||
| Basic education | 100 | 95 | 75 | 46 | ||||
| Remedial education | 87 | 85 | 71 | 44 | ||||
| Advanced academics | 73 | 73 | 62 | 41 | ||||
| Homebound education | 40 | 38 | 12 | 44 | ||||
aThe total excludes "other programs" from the analyses. Numbers of programs included in each row vary slightly because of missing data. | ||||||||
The likelihood of specific program components varied by program type, as one might expect. On-site child care was provided by three-quarters of the comprehensive programs in our sample and by more than half of the mainstream programs. In the latter instance, child care and a child care lab often constituted the major program elements, since enrollees took other classes with nonparenting students. Nonschool-sponsored programs were much less likely to offer on-site child care.
More than three-quarters of the comprehensive programs provided enrollees some support for or assistance with family planning. Most comprehensive programs that provided such support offered it on-site, but mainstream and nonschool-sponsored programs typically required that enrollees go elsewhere for such services. These differences are significant because successful family planning for teens is most likely when information and services are available at the same site (WHO, 1980). In most cases, family planning support offered off-site represents little more than a referral to community-based family planning clinics. Unless there is good program-based follow-up, many enrollees will fail to use such a referral (e.g., Nathanson and Becker, 1985).
Both school-based program types were more likely to provide case management than nonschool-sponsored programs. Indeed, over 80 percent of programs of these types provided case management--a program attribute considered very important in assuring that teenage mothers receive the services that they need (e.g., Polit, 1986).
Every comprehensive program provides enrollees some form of parenting education, and nearly every mainstream program does so as well. Three quarters of the nonschool-sponsored programs provide this component to enrollees. The nearly universal provision of parenting education is not surprising, given the history and goals of teen parent programs. Most pregnancy and parenting programs today continue to regard parenting education as a major goal, given continuing concerns about the limited parenting skills of young mothers, and especially those who will live alone with their babies (e.g., Field et al., 1980; Greene et al., 1981).
The programs in our sample provide enrollees with a range of educational opportunities. For example, all of the comprehensive programs in our sample provide basic education, and nearly all provide remedial education. Almost three-quarters of programs of this type claim to provide advanced academics, often through individualized instruction, but availability depends upon teachers' own skills and credentials. Respondents generally agreed that advanced academics is the weakest program component in comprehensive programs. Mainstream programs also provide enrollees a wide range of educational opportunities. Ninety-five percent of these programs provide basic education and 85 percent provide remedial instruction. Sixty percent provide advanced academics on-site, and 14 percent provide them in another setting. Consistent with their joint sponsorship, nonschool-sponsored programs are less likely to provide educational services. But it is striking that the vast majority do so, a point discussed in more detail in Sec. 4.
The 11 programs that we visited during the fieldwork portion of the study differ in terms of the model they follow for dealing with teen pregnancy. Two models emerged: the short-term crisis model and the sequential services model. The short-term crisis model assumes that the period surrounding pregnancy and delivery is critical in terms of directing or redirecting a young mother's life. A wide range of services during this period is believed to help the new mother through the crisis and provide her the psychological, educational, and practical resources necessary to manage on her own when she leaves the program soon after delivery.
Sequential service models link agencies over time to provide focused services that meet the specific needs of mothers and babies at a particular time. Underlying this model is the belief that the need for help continues well past delivery, and that teen mothers cannot be assumed to have acquired the skills to find this help on their own for a considerable time. A third model, the provision of long-term services over an extended period in a single program or through the direction of a single case manager, was not represented in our fieldwork sample.
Nine of the 11 programs that we visited were based upon a short-term crisis-oriented model and provided comprehensive services to enrollees. Eight of these nine enroll students when they become pregnant, although some will take on parents who had not enrolled earlier. Because of their relatively short time frame, the majority of students in these programs at any one time are pregnant; in one case, for instance, the composition was maintained at about 75 percent pregnant, 25 percent parenting. These programs are set up to serve teen parents for varying lengths of time, usually limited by an end point, such as delivery or a certain number of weeks postpartum. Often, the time a mother is allowed to remain in the program is determined by the availability of child care slots in the program's nursery or by the demand for the program. Programs in cities with a high teen birth rate tend to have a large waiting list; they were the least likely to allow mothers to remain long after delivery. Six of the nine short-term programs we visited allow enrollees to remain in the program an extra year or until graduation, although three of these strongly encourage enrollees to leave earlier if they can arrange child care on their own and feel confident about returning to a regular school program. Most of the mothers in these latter programs remained only through the semester of delivery before moving back to their home school or on to a GED program.
The remaining two programs that we visited serve teen parents on a short-term basis but are linked to each other so closely that we characterize them as sequential programs. Enrollees go from one into the other as they progress from pregnancy and the first year postpartum to life as mother of a toddler. These two programs made links, furthermore, to post-program services and support. Mothers spend one to two years at the first program, which provides intensive parenting and basic education services typical of short-term crisis-oriented programs. This program serves middle and high school students, and it also provides child care for infants up to one year of age. There is a mandatory guidance class in which student aptitudes are tested and a range of career possibilities are presented. The program assesses whether students meet vocational education eligibility requirements and directs enrollees with skill deficits into a district-run program providing remedial skills development.
The second program has an enrollment constituting male and female, parenting and nonparenting students. The program offers child care for toddlers and ongoing peer and social worker support for parents and focuses on the development of specific job skills.
Nine of the 11 programs that we visited constitute alternative schools; one of these serves a mixed student population comprising any student at risk of dropping out; the other eight serve teen parents only. (See Table 2.4 for a presentation of program locations.) For all but two of the alternative schools the program's location was determined by where space was available; two programs were intentionally located on and near a voc-tech campus to enhance cross-enrollments.
Two additional programs provide services to teen parents enrolled in regular school programs. The first program has no formal location; it is an unofficial effort by school staff to provide counseling and peer support to students at the high school in the absence of a formal district program. The second program, situated on a voc-tech campus and across the street from a high school, was deliberately located there to provide child care to parenting teens enrolled at either school.
Altogether, five programs in our sample are located with or very near vocational education programs. Two programs are collocated with voc-tech centers and one is nearby. Two other programs are collocated at institutions providing vocational education--one at the high school and the other at a continuation school with a career center.
| Breadth of Services | ||||||||
| Program Location | Comprehensive Services | Ancillary Services Only | ||||||
| Isolated separate site | 5 programs | |||||||
| Collocated with special school | 2 programs | |||||||
| Separate site near voc-tech | 1 program | |||||||
| Collocated with voc-tech | 1 program | |||||||
| Collocated with voc-tech, near high school | 1 program | |||||||
| Collocated with high school | 1 program | |||||||
The programs in our sample tended to have many goals for their enrollees, which is common in such programs (Polit, 1986). Program goals generally fell into three categories: (1) schooling goals, including preventing dropout, completing high school, and getting a GED; (2) parenting outcomes, including healthy babies, healthy mothers, and parental competence; and (3) employment outcomes, including job skills, job placement, and economic self-sufficiency. Another common goal, enhancing self-esteem, was seen as a desired outcome to be achieved through efforts in each of the other three categories. There was remarkable consensus among programs about these goals and how they were ranked. Educational and parenting goals were considered critical in all programs; employment goals were considered far less important in most.
As shown in Table 2.5, school dropout prevention was a goal in all of the school-sponsored programs; most also aimed for high school completion or, more rarely, acquisition of a GED. Program staff believed that the diploma or GED was critical to success for teen parents, both as a facilitator of job entry or further education and as a boost to self-esteem. The diploma was preferred to the GED in virtually every program, because it was seen as more marketable. In some districts, funding is specifically targeted to high school diplomas, not GEDs. In these districts, counselors must advise pregnant and parenting students of the GED option surreptitiously, and may have to send them to adult education to get one. This strong push for diplomas raised concern among a distinct minority of respondents, who contended that the GED is a more realistic goal for many school-age parents because it can be achieved more quickly in most cases.
Improved parenting was also a widespread program goal, and in many programs parenting was a mandatory program component. As shown in Table 2.5, most of the programs worked toward healthy babies and nearly all toward creating competent parents.
| Program Type | |||||||||||
| Program Goal | Comprehensive (No.=16) | Mainstream (No.=22) | Nonschool- sponsored (No.=8) | Total (No.=46) | |||||||
| Schooling goals | |||||||||||
| Dropout prevention High school completion GED | 100 100 44 | 95 95 9 | 75 50 25 | 93 83 24 | |||||||
| Parenting outcomes | |||||||||||
| Healthy baby Healthy mother Competent parent Avoid repeat pregnancy Optimal child development | 81 81 94 88 88 | 95 86 95 82 82 | 63 63 88 50 50 | 85 80 93 78 78 | |||||||
| Employment outcomes | |||||||||||
| Economic self-sufficiency Vocational education and job-skills training Job placement Work socialization | 75 69 56 50 | 68 82 45 68 | 88 75 75 75 | 74 76 54 63 | |||||||
Economic self-sufficiency and vocational education and job skills training were goals for three-quarters of the programs in our sample. Far fewer hoped to achieve job placement. The emphasis on vocational education goals in these programs for pregnant and parenting students is not surprising, given that we looked for such program emphases as a selection criterion in the programs we interviewed, and many of our programs are housed in voc-tech centers. It is likely that a strong vocational education emphasis would be less common in a randomly selected group of such programs. (See, for example, Zellman, 1981; GAO, 1986.)
Endorsement of vocational education/job skills, work socialization, and economic self-sufficiency as program goals varied by type of program, with nonschool-sponsored programs most likely to ascribe to these goals. Among the school-sponsored programs, comprehensive programs were less likely to endorse job-skills training and work socialization as program goals than were mainstream programs.
These findings are consistent with the location and sponsorship of the different program types. Nonschool-sponsored programs are often funded by organizations such as the YWCA, Private Industry Councils,[36] or a County Welfare Department. These funders focus on job-skills training and may require that job placement be a measured program outcome. Among programs in our sample sponsored exclusively by schools, mainstream programs often are collocated with vocational programs in regional voc-tech centers, or because of state funding regulations related to child care, may find themselves in adult community education settings. These settings support enrollee involvement with a range of often sophisticated vocational opportunities. In contrast, comprehensive programs apportion a substantial portion of the limited program time available to improved medical outcomes of pregnancy, limiting the importance and feasibility of vocational training. However, if a program goal is increased economic self-sufficiency (and most times there is such a goal; see Table 2.5), time often is spent on career guidance and vocational skills assessment with the idea that after delivery, new mothers can begin occupational preparation.
Program activities in the programs that we visited generally were consistent with program goals. Most programs appear to provide a wide range of activities and services designed to enhance self-esteem, basic education, and parenting skills.
Eight of the nine comprehensive programs we visited provide diploma-oriented academic coursework on-site, usually limited to basic subjects; some offered remedial tutoring. Because of the limited teaching staff and the pressing need to provide basic education and remedial work, advanced academics (e.g., foreign languages, higher math, science) are available in only a few of the programs and only then through special individual arrangement. For example, in one program these courses are available during evening classes at the adult school adjacent to the program. The ninth comprehensive program provides GED preparation only. GED preparation is supplemented by basic skills education for students who lack the skills necessary to begin work on the GED.
All eleven programs offer some sort of parenting activities, which range from informal counseling to mandatory classes and time in the child care lab. In six programs, some parenting involvement was required every semester of enrollment. The required parenting class usually meets daily for one class period. One program, however, requires mothers to spend the lunch hour with their babies, to attend a daily one hour class on parenting skills, and to spend a third hour daily with the babies in the child care lab where they learn about child development and practice parenting skills. The entire afternoon of each day is, in effect, devoted to parenting.
Child care is universally recognized as the program component most responsible for preventing dropout among teen parents. Nine programs in our sample offer child care on-site. Eight of these are alternative schools; one is a special child care center collocated at a voc-tech and high school. In some cases, child care is limited to newborns, which effectively sets an end date for mothers' participation in the teen parent program. In contrast, some programs arrange for toddler care and allow program participants to use child care services until they graduate. In all nine sites providing child care, it is limited to program hours. When mothers have after-school commitments (including work-study participation), other arrangements must be made, as discussed in more detail in Sec. 3.
The tenth program, an alternative school for teen parents, has an arrangement with a high school in the district that offers child care. Transportation is available between the high school and the teen parent program for those mothers who need child care. The final program, the informal groups, has no child care, but staff help young parents find child care through informal referrals.
The location of the teen parent program, the child care facility, and vocational courses determine the importance of transportation for parenting students. When these services are centralized in a very large district far from the homes of many teen parents or when each of these services is provided in separate dispersed locations, transportation becomes critical.
Eight of the programs in our sample provide some transportation for enrollees and their infants, but only five provide sufficient transportation to link key services--the teen parenting program, the child care center, and vocational education opportunities--with each other and with enrollees' homes. Three programs link program services and child care with enrollees' homes but fail to provide transportation to off-site vocational education programs. In these programs, the rate of participation in "available" vocational education coursework was zero because there was no transportation for it, as discussed in more detail in Sec. 3. Said one program staff member, "the girls simply can't do it without transportation."
Program staff in districts offering no transportation were not always aware of the need for it. Said a program director in one such district, "It seems that transportation is not a problem. If a girl really wants to participate in the program, she figures out some way to get here." In other programs, staff are aware of and concerned about inadequate transportation. One director complained about surrounding rural districts that did not provide transportation to their teen mothers that allowed them to get into the city to participate in the centralized teen parent program. The rural districts provide no special services of their own but do provide transportation to other special programs (e.g., to the regional voc-tech school) for their students.
Formal recognition of the needs of pregnant and parenting students was widespread in our districts. Nearly all districts in our sample had some program available for pregnant and parenting students. This program typically represented the district's sole response to teen parenting. Teen parents who either chose to remain in regular school programs or who could not be accommodated in the special program rarely received special services. Dropouts were neither tracked nor encouraged to return in any district.
Teen parent programs for the most part aim to keep pregnant and parenting students in school, make them better parents, and prepare them to assume economic responsibility for themselves and their babies. Program goals and opportunities are generally consistent. Programs devote a lot of time to academic coursework and to parenting-related education. Most programs, in fact, require such participation. Provision of vocational education skills training is less common and reflects less consensus about the value of such training during secondary school, an issue we pursue in more detail in the next section.
[26]The data reported in this section are drawn from both the telephone survey in 49 districts and from site visits to 11 teen parent programs.
[27]Data in this section were collected on the phone.
[28]In some states homebound education must be provided when medically indicated.
[29]Data in this section were collected during site visits.
[30]As discussed in Sec. 1, it is doubtful that pregnant and parenting teens will fully benefit from these provisions, since single parents and pregnant women are not listed in the definition of special populations. Although most pregnant and parenting teens would qualify as "disadvantaged," they would be less likely to be considered as a group in school district program planning.
[31]The next two subsections rely on data from telephone interviews.
[32]This figure underestimates the true numbers of nonschool-sponsored programs to an unknown degree, as interviewers lacked the resources to conduct exhaustive searches for all community-based programs.
[33]The discussion of program components first focuses on offerings unrelated to vocational education. Later in the section, workforce-related education opportunities in our sampled programs are separately discussed.
[34]Data in this subsection were collected during site visits.
[35]This section draws on telephone survey data.
[36]Private Industry Councils administer JTPA funds, usually contracting out programs.
[37]This subsection relies on fieldwork data.