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9486 in the collection
Educating Youth an Economic Challenge
Ohanian Comment: It goes without saying that I want everybody to have a high school diploma--and more education too, but to claim that if you educate a work force, the jobs will follow seems naive at best. At worst? Start with duplicitous. Ask the hundreds of thousands of high tech workers whose jobs have been shipped to India. The greatest challenge to any city's economy is probably more complex than educating youth. Can the reporter spell corporate greed?
Brian Morgan is a prospector of sorts. He scours the creases of Milwaukee's craggiest neighborhoods for untapped workers.
Following tips from a web of probation officers, counselors and social workers, he mines for dropouts for Reach-Milwaukee, a program to help out-of-school youths make something of themselves. For more than a week, Morgan has been trying to find one particular young man named Sing.
Morgan's groundwork strikes at the core of what may be the greatest challenge to Wisconsin's economy: educating the young people of Milwaukee.
The situation is especially critical for young blacks, economists and policy analysts say. Separate studies in the past year show that Wisconsin has the nation's greatest disparity between blacks and whites in eighth-grade reading and math scores and in the rates of high school graduation and incarceration.
Wisconsin also has the nation's lowest employment rate for African-Americans.
Less than half of blacks in Wisconsin who are 16 and older and not in prison have jobs. That's lower than Alabama, lower than Mississippi and much lower than Minnesota, where 67% of that population has jobs.
If Wisconsin's African-American residents were working at the same rate as Minnesota's, Wisconsin would have nearly 32,000 more workers generating more than a $1 billion a year in income, based on average wages.
"If you fail at developing an educated work force, the future is going to be very bleak," said Art Rolnick, senior vice president and director of research for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. "If you don't have an educated work force, you haven't got a chance."
Rolnick, who has built on groundbreaking research from the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, says educated children are less likely to cause trouble and commit crimes and are more likely to become productive wage earners and taxpayers. Putting money in the early education of poor children, he says, is a good investment. He has calculated the rate of return at 16%.
Stumbling block
Lack of education presents a stumbling block for an economy.
Those without a high school education represent 13% of Wisconsin's adults but 46% of the state's prison population and 46% of the state's welfare program participants.
In Milwaukee, nearly 89,000 residents 25 and older have less than a high school education. Had those people finished high school, the city would have almost 2,800 more workers and $560 million a year more in earnings, using national unemployment data and state earnings estimates based on education level.
If those dropouts had associate's degrees, there would be 4,100 more workers and $1.2 billion more in annual income.
"The biggest bang for Wisconsin will come from Milwaukee. No question about it," said George Lightbourn, co-author of an upcoming report from the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.
The report finds that a lack of education in Milwaukee's work force drags down the regional and state economies. The study estimates that for every $1 increase in Milwaukee's per capita income, the per capita income would grow 20 cents for the metro area and 32 cents statewide.
The study notes that Milwaukee's economic performance has suffered as its share of college-educated residents has fallen in comparison with other top cities. In 1970, Milwaukee ranked 29th nationally in income per person out of the top 50 cities. In 2000, it was 44th.
As Wisconsin recovers from the 2001 recession, employers will again need workers, and economists say they'll be looking toward Milwaukee's underused work force to sustain their businesses.
Terry Ludeman, chief labor economist for the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, speaks with urgency about the wasted potential of Wisconsin's young minority population, the bulk of which is in Milwaukee.
"This is a population that in many ways is failing," Ludeman said.
That failure could have profound effects on the state's future work force, he warns. Minority groups account for 18% of Wisconsin's children younger than 16, compared with 4% among state residents 60 and older.
Target youths
All that Brian Morgan knows of the young man named Sing is that he's between the ages of 14 and 21, out of school, and living in the target area bounded by Locust St. on the north, Juneau Ave. on the south, Holton St. on the east and 35th St. on the west. But that's all Morgan needs to know to qualify the young man for services through Reach-Milwaukee.
"We have a lot of young people that want to get into the work force," Morgan said. "A lot of them have good hearts, but they haven't had a lot of opportunities to show it."
At the Reach center at N. 27th St. and W. North Ave., Morgan and other case managers and senior staff talk about the opportunities available to the young people they work with. They're concerned that even as they try to develop better job prospects in Milwaukee, they see employers closing shop and moving out.
It's a chicken-or-egg conundrum: Would employers respond if the work force were better educated?
"Absolutely yes," Ludeman said. "Companies locate where they locate based on, first, skilled work force and, second, the economic well-being of that area."
Harry Holzer, former chief economist for the U.S. Department of Labor, agrees that if you educate a work force, the jobs will follow.
"If it's easier for employers to find reliable, skilled workers, then they have an incentive to stick around more, to invest more in those populations, to reach out more," Holzer said.
Elmer Winter wants more employers to see the value of developing Milwaukee's work force. Winter, the retired co-founder of Manpower Inc., the nation's largest staffing company, has been a steadfast advocate for improving Milwaukee Public Schools. At 91, he's still involved in campaigns to donate hundreds of refurbished computers to MPS and to revitalize the Metcalfe Park area.
"I've maintained for many years that - I think it's maybe coming to haunt us now - that the future of the work force is going to come from that population that's being educated in the public school system," Winter said. "And you'd better protect your future work force by being involved in the public school system."
Sing Bouttakhot is six months past his 19th birthday. He's broad-shouldered, well-groomed and soft-spoken. He likes to work with his hands.
Bouttakhot stopped going to school just before ninth grade.
"I was kicking it too much. I was having too much fun and didn't want to go to school," he said. Eventually, his good times caught up with him, and Bouttakhot ended up in a group home.
Then he attended Project Stay, an alternative high school run by MPS. He says he finished his course work. Now he's waiting to see how he did on his English proficiency exam, without which he can't graduate.
A probation officer concerned with Bouttakhot's situation called Morgan to get Bouttakhot hooked up with Reach.
Dropouts often inmates
Economist Holzer, whose work includes a book about the job prospects for less-educated workers, says dropouts often end up as inmates.
"Being a young, black, male, high-school dropout is almost a ticket to prison these days," said Holzer, a professor at Georgetown University who's affiliated with the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "You can trace that link: very poor early education experience and very little work experience leading to involvement in crime, incarceration, and then when these guys come out, they have very poor labor market opportunities. It's a grim story."
Insufficient education has a lot to do with the low employment rate for Wisconsin's black population.
The low employment rate for African-Americans in Wisconsin is most pronounced for the 72,000 black males older than 16. Only 49% of them are employed, vs. 73% of all working-age males in Wisconsin, according to 2002 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. If those black men were employed at the same rate as all males statewide, there would be an increase of 17,000 workers, adding $587 million a year to the economy.
From a small desk in the basement of the Martin Luther King Community Center, Morgan works the phones, tracing leads on stray youths.
He has developed his contacts through years of work at local service agencies - and from growing up in these neighborhoods.
"I could've easily gone over to the other side, of not doing positive things," Morgan mused between calls. The fact that he graduated from high school and then college and now is trying to make a difference in the community is a tribute, he says, to the direction of his family and influential adults he met through church, the Boys & Girls Club and city basketball leagues.
Those who work with dropouts and dropouts themselves point to a wide range of reasons why young people don't finish school. They boil down to an inability to connect school attendance and learning with later success in life.
That connection is much stronger today than a generation ago. Then, family-supporting factory jobs valued brawn over brains. But now - and into the future - earning more closely follows learning.
A census report shows that in 1975, full-time year-round workers without a high school diploma made 90% of the earnings of high school graduates. By 1999, those without a high school education earned only 70% of those who did. Workers with a bachelor's degree made 1.8 times the income of high school graduates in 1999, up from 1.5 in 1975. Over a lifetime, a college graduate earns $1.1 million more than a dropout, according to census estimates.
Finding Sing
Morgan approaches the heavy locked door of a duplex several blocks from the King Community Center. With his clean-cut looks, white shirt and tie, Morgan resembles a door-to-door salesman or a preacher.
Bouttakhot lets Morgan in and invites him to sit down. Folded comforters and pillows are on the floor. Model sports cars are arranged on top of a TV cabinet. Walls are decorated with floral prints, a poster of the Hulk, a photograph of rapper 50 Cent and a tapestry that says "Laos 2000 Souvenir."
In talking with Morgan, Bouttakhot says he has filled out job applications at a number of stores but hasn't heard back from any. He says he's waiting to be accepted at Milwaukee Area Technical College and that he wants to study automotive technology.
Morgan's face brightens. He tells Bouttakhot that because he's not in school, he can enroll in Reach and thus qualify for a 15-week free training program sponsored by the Automobile Dealers Association of Mega Milwaukee. Morgan knows Reach participants who are going through such training and stand to land jobs making $13 an hour afterward.
If Bouttakhot needs it, Reach can help him pass the proficiency test and get his high school diploma, Morgan says. Reach can help him get into MATC and even drive him to the auto classes, at the college's Oak Creek campus.
Bouttakhot fills out the enrollment forms Morgan has brought along and agrees to join Morgan later to meet a case manager, who will assess his interests and skill levels and map out a career development plan.
Morgan gives Bouttakhot his card, a handshake and some encouragement.
"We definitely want you to stay focused, stay motivated and get the school thing done," Morgan says.
Gerard Randall, president of the Private Industry Council of Milwaukee County, which oversees Reach-Milwaukee, says dropouts pose the most serious problem to the area's economy.
"Our shortsightedness is going to have devastating consequences," said Randall, a former teacher at Milwaukee's Bell Middle School. "And once we awaken to all the things that we should've done to address our employment needs, we may find that it's either too late or too expensive for reasonable people to bear."
The upcoming report from the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute suggests it's not too late for Milwaukee and its labor force. But time is running out.
"There is a clarion call. There is a sense of urgency that every year that goes by, the city falls further behind," said Lightbourn, the report's co-author and former secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Administration. "It's not going to happen in three or four or five years. But over a 20- to 30-year period, Milwaukee can recapture its status among great American cities."
— Joel Dresang
Educating youth an economic challenge
Journal Sentinel
2004-01-17
http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/jan04/200647.asp
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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